Stop saying "the population is low". Yes it is because matchmaking is terrible! Nobody wanna play pvp anymore..
If you are a good player and winning a couple games, anets mm punishing you with terrible players. And they are thinking this is a balance.. No it is not! It is so frustrating when you winning all your fights, kiting 2 players, doing everything right but keep losing games! And those annoying "who cares, just a game calm bro, cry me more, afk" noob players!
If you are a newbie or average/below average player, anet using you as a punishment on good players. Many of them getting angry and yelling/shouting at you. You keep losing games and getting frustrating about toxic chats.
So how pvp can survive. Definetly mm needs rework! Do you remember old "goods are good, bads are bad" season? That was a nice one. Reroll to it and do some adjustments.
You need to create teams from Winner and Loser players. Dont mix them! Let the winners fight eachother, same as losers too. Disallow duo and rerolling. Remove daily from ranked arena. When complete all, everything is gonna be alright. Otherwise nothings gonna change, you can keep removing some sigils or amulets, reworking class skills etc. all are useless.