So the catalyst is out, but you need gear from either raid, M+, world boss, upgraded primal storm gear or upgraded bloody token gear. Those last two are the ones you can get solo and even without PvP.
Heres how you get the PVP upgrade trophies, it’s the weekly quest for 100 currency you get by killing players in a zone, doing World quests in that zone with warmode on or… here’s the sneaky part… digging dirt with warmode on. Assuming you have rank 5 or whatever it is you go get a couple stacks of shovels and make your rounds through the zone (currently waning shore.). Every dirt pile had a chance of giving 5 currency.
Yes there are quicker ways to get better gear, but this can be pretty mindless and almost zero risk.