I do notice a difference, but I also attribute that to me becoming a better player over time and trading cooldowns/avoiding situations a bit more wisely than 6 months ago.
I literally have never lost a game and blamed gear, unless I’m starting an alt. To some degree, entry level conquest gear and it’s doable. There are a million other things I can focus on as a reason I lost before I say gear, and the difference between Rival and Duelist gear is certainly not the reason anybody lost.
The issue I see (I play affliction to maybe this is biased…) is that the game seems to recently be geared specifically favoring set up comps. Rot comps aren’t performing as well, and while cleaves are performing well, I’m unsure how long that will last in the later part of the expansion. Like Hearthstone, aggro, control, set up and midrange should all have their pros and cons, and maintain a fair balance. Think of cleaves as aggro, and rot comp as control. Now I know Hearthstone isn’t always entirely balanced, but it is usually balanced much better than WoW PvP.
I know it’s hard to balance a game for both PvE and PvP at the same time, and the majority of subscriptions are PvE favored. I get that the entire world doesn’t revolve around myself, or even the PvP community. But I like the idea that’s been brought up of creating a separate game specifically for PvP ( or even a separate realm would do) without the content grind and gearing. Just great class design, and let it rip.