during vanilla you had to play a lot to get stuff with battle ground ,no matter your skill.
since wow set arenas you didn't need to play a lot but well to get some stuff
i was a casual player i was always decently geared ,cause i mixed BG/arena/pve (pve for weapons)
plus blizzard did a bad thing,they always tried to balance classes but they never succeeded in,it means you played the right class you were imba.
i don't regret the wow's pvp (i used to plau from 2005 to 2010)