Personally i believe that awakens helped kill it completely. Only the richest of players have the gold to gather a full strong awakened set, which is pretty sad. Back in the day everyone had a chance to compete and the "Richest" or "Best" players was still a bit stronger, which balanced pvp out perfectly if you ask me. Turning off awakenings or only allowing 1 awakening per item could help fix this issue and maybe on the long run bring some people back to the lower lvls.