Well before 1.14 ranking to 14 was a goal only people who would / could do that were able to achieve. And it was a lot more than just 12h on the weekends, it was nearly everyday for a month.
With 1.14 it became significantly easier like 1/3 to 1/4 of the commitment compared to ranking in 1.12 but still a climb - especially if the queues are slow.
At this point basically everyone that wanted rank 14 gear has it and it has little prestige left - so they could just remove decay altogether and it would be much easier for people to push rank 13 to 14 even with slow queues.
The sucky thing is that the easier it becomes the worse rank 14 players are - it just takes a long time to become really good at a class and the current system doesn’t really force players to play enough to get to those levels. Also, in 1.12 the community would basically self-select who got the highest brackets and they were rarely bad players.
So idk what is best, but I feel like we may as well just give people the gear so if they are bad, at least they are bad in good gear and it carries them a little bit. Whatever improves the quality and amount of pvp games more I support.