weapon was huge back then
but mainly i went mad because of "best gear" just from shadowlands battlegrounds
at the expansion start u could get only sth like 171ilvl for bg farming, while m0 which skill lvl is probably similar to random battlegrounds u could farm 184
after 2 weeks(or 3?) random pvp bg gear was upgradable to 184 and mythic+ you could basically get 200 or 210? not remember ilvl gear just for spaming it while u were stuck to 184 from pvp
only posibility for decent pvp gear at start of a season was conquest cap which was literally enough only for small items like wrists, and ppl saved it to get weapons after week 4? of the season (week 6? of the expansion) + you got random item from vault which could be worst in slot(secondary stats wise) item like wrists or trinket u wouldnt ever use.
i remember playing pvp at 2k+ rating which my 12x184ilvl gear + 3 random bad vault 226 items with completely wrong stats early january vs all those pve monkeys with over 5-7k hp more than me it was huge, then probably close to weapon purchase it becamse possible to upgrade ur pvp bg gear to 197 and it was cool but still not enough in that time
pvp gearing in shadowlands became good after 2 or more months, and guess what majority of pvp players do early expansions? they wanna have fun in pvp because everything is new, and we did not have fun.
Funny fact is that when break even point came (conquest cap big enough to = to pve gear) a lot of crybabies came and blizzard instantly made a valor upgrade system for pve players to compensate
))) i love it
its so nice that they could instantly react for pve players but couldnt do anything to make pvp better - 197 ilvl gear at start of the season for casual pvp would be probably almost enough
tl;dr shadowlands pvp gearing sucked freaking ass until end of the 8 th week into the season which is absurd compared to pve gearing
just imagine if it would be opossite, getting 220 15 items from pvp, and 14 184 ilvl items from pve + random
1 (yes ONE PIECE) 220 or 226 ppl would destroy blizzard forums
and btw in tbc wotlk u could get almost all bis items(offparts) for honor and u needed only 5/5 set + weapons for arena points which tbh took quite a time to afford but the diff wasnt 30ilvls in every piece