They were for me before Legion…
I think you are forgetting you could get conquest doing random BGs, and as of right now, you cannot get any conquest outside of rated PVP in SL.
During WoD, I had many toons with full conquest and did no rated PVP or PVE.
I accounted for completing the conquest cap in BFA.
Only other expansion where that’s relevant is possibly WoD, where you’d have to complete the battle ground dailies every single day for almost 2 months to purchase a single piece of conquest gear.
At best we can use that to up the average iLVL of a WoD player by 2 iLVLs in an expansion where the gap was already fairly small.
BGs will never offer gear comparative to rated content or even PvE. To even get gear equivalent of M+ 15s required you to be at a dumb level of arena rating to begin with.
Can someone direct me to where the changes are that have folks upset?
That is not how it was. Check your facts.
And this is why that gearing system was so great for rated and unrated players alike. But when PVP gear can be used in PVE without penalty, it has to be gated behind a long grind and follow the same large ilvl gaps.
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/shadowlands-pvp-rewards/728426?u=graendoll-emerald-dream
They removed conquest from all unrated activities and made the weekly vault earned by honor from rated PVP only.
Do you realize what board you are posting on??
…better get that flame shield up, incoming! 
That’s literally just WoD though.
Which is also the same expansion where the PVP community become so hostile to the lead PVP dev (Brian Holinka) that he had to delete his twitter account and leave the World of Warcraft development team. (He’s since returned)
Maybe you should have been more vocal during that expansion when people where issuing death threats to the person who created the version of the game you enjoy.
So, this seems like it punishes casual players? Am I interpreting that correctly?
I think it will be ok… what I think will suffer is Epics BG’s. Can’t wait for 1 hour queue for it as Horde .
It doesn’t punish anyone.
It just doesn’t provide competitive rewards for players that don’t do minimal amounts of rated PVP.
Rated PVP doesn’t require more time than Random BGs, it’s still an easily accessible way to spend your time as a casual PVP player.
I was too busy playing BG after BG to bother with the forums.
Also, we’re people issuing death threats because the gearing system was bad? No.
You are talking about PVP gear, not arena comps and class balance.
THANK YOU! I’ve been wondering what the actual ilvls were, it’s been so long–was this the first season or the third?
People did Ashran for conquest, way faster, especially with premades.
People hated WoD PvP because of class tuning and design, not gear systems. But as a priest I loved every second of WoD’s class design, except for DK’s in season 1.
Then why do the rewards have to be segregated if they are so similar?
Rating allowing a higher conquest cap worked very well. Rated players got gear faster and there was light at the end of the tunnel for unrated players. All while keeping the ilvl disparity in check.
I think the third. It might have been 15 ilvl in earlier seasons
Ah yes, Ashran the beloved PVP game mode.
I personally remember seeing twitch chat and Brian Holinkas twitter literally flooded with “Take Ashran and shove it up your ASSran”
And I personally played it a lot and enjoyed it.
Stop trying to make this about everything bad in WoD.
You brought up that SL gearing is basically the same as it was in previous expansions. Maybe stick to your own topic?
Because rated BGs validate that you can consistently beat an opposing team of an expected skill level.
BGs have no way of validating that you’re even at your keyboard or that your opponents aren’t bots.
Once again, you brought up PVP gearing, systems and now you are talking about bots?
At the very least in MoP/WoD, the casuals and BG only players could play arena and lose a lot but still get their cap faster. In the end they had their max ilvl gear to take into BGs and play with.