Sort of. Venruki did complain about gear, but it was the terrible ilvl scaling. Elite PvP gear was lower ilvl than some heroic stuff from Antorus even so it felt bad that there was no avenue to be max PvP power from PvP, you would have to do M+ or raid.
I wore all my PvE sets in PvP because ilvl was higher and stuff swapped over anyways.
I’m pretty sure then even normalized class weapon ilvl for PvP too, but idr that well.