Oh ofc. I’m not trying to say PvP doesn’t reward gear at all.
I did do end game PvP for the first few months of the expansion, so I am somewhat familiar with the systems.
Sure it’s possible that someone could only do PvP and only get conq gear and be competitive. But, someone who does that will almost certainly, fall behind the same player, who does similar levels of rated PvP, at similar rating, but also does emissaries, world bosses, AFKfronts, M+, Islands, etc. Which the player who does both PvE and PvP should be better geared overall, ofc, but that person will also be more powerful in PvP because of their PvE efforts. In the past with resil/pvp power that was not the case. You could, and I did, only log on and que up PvP to earn your honor/conq points and be equally geared for PvP as someone who does both PvP and PvE (for the most part at least, there where a few outliers in legendaries in Cata for example, but overall it holds true).
This might very well be more psychological than anything. When I’d log on I wanted to que up rated bgs, or find arena partners, or just do some randoms to warm up. But if I did that, and ignored the emissary that could possibly drop an upgraded Azerite piece, and didn’t do the world boss that drops a trinket that would be BiS if it forged and didn’t do the warfront for the free piece of gear, etc… I would feel bad, like I was neglecting upgrading my character as much as I could. That might just be a personal thing, but that feeling of obligation to do all of these things that could make my toon stronger in PvP just sapped the fun out of it. Previous expansions never felt that way, I happily ignored raiding, dungeons, end game quests, etc. every expansion and was still as geared as I could be for PvP through conq vendors. Now if I do that there’s that nagging thought in the back of my head saying " you know if you went and did that warfront you could have a better weapon right now" or " You should be doing those world quests that could get you a better pair of shoulders ". etc.
I’m not saying that everyone should feel that way, nor am I asking for Blizz to change the game to fit my taste (though wanting vendors back is hardly a niche opinion), I have simply done what any customer does when they aren’t happy with a product… I’ve stopped using it. Or in this case I have found a way to still enjoy the product in a different way than they designed it. Though even that is winding down, I am basically just coasting by with WoW till D2 comes out then I will most likely let my sub expire.