People make custom hot join servers for SPvP and optimize it as much as possible to quickly earn rank points. They force everyone to play without armor, wear berserker trinkets, prohibit capturing points, and set the respawn timer as low as possible. PvP rank has little meaning when people play PvP in unnatural ways and only farm points as fast as possible. PvP arenas using custom rules (any server not in the standard rules filter) shouldn’t contribute rank points, only glory points.
Anet likely didn’t want to remove the armor stats entirely because…well,
we’ve all seen what happens in games where there’s no disadvantage to taking your pants off.