Vindictive Combatants Gear Unobtainable?

[Piplupzero]

Hello MMO-C! Long time lurker, first time poster here with a question.
So in legion the reward you get from all PVP is tied to your ranked rating. This means that past a certain point random BG's will start giving gladiator gear. The problem I have is I actually want the combatant gear (ilevel 805) for transmog and despite doing BG's on and off since launch till I got sick of them (honor level 48 almost entirely though BG's with ~50% winrate) I still do not have some pieces of the combatants set, my honor level is already to high to get them from world quests.
The issue arises that I have friends I like to do rated PVP with so we will likely be doing that soon but this will close off being able to get the remaining combatant pieces to me FOREVER unless I choose to level another character of the exact same class and faction (despite sharing appearances every class has their own combatants gear)
Surely this is a massive oversight that they have some kind of contingency against. They can't have designed a system that can give you 4 trinkets in a row then deny people from getting the appearances about two weeks after the xpac launched. I must be missing something

I have made a post on the blizz forums but lolEU so I hope theres an obvious solution Im missing because the combatants gear is actually quite good this xpac

Tl;Dr: Am I screwing myself out of transmog drops by gaining an arena/BG rating?

[DeicideUH]

I expect that the gear will be available to buy with Marks of Honor once this season ends.

[Piplupzero]

Have they really designed a system you can lock yourself out of low power RNG rewards by accident for a whole year? That seems like very poor design

[Mafic]

Have they really designed a system you can lock yourself out of low power RNG rewards by accident for a whole year? That seems like very poor design

Yes. It is intentional.

They expect you to do PVE to fill in the rest of the pieces.

And I agree it is poor design.

[Piplupzero]

You literally can't. Those appearances are literally only available through the PVP system.