What does permanent damage to armor every fight actually accomplish in its current state? Maybe the changes to pvp are intended to some point but it brings a few unwanted side effects to pve. To some players, at least to me, pve is the only aspect that they care for.
I will mention a few of the those negative side effects to pve:
If you take damage by default it actually punishes trying out fighting or fighting animals at all if you get your armor damaged. For most people there is likely no chance to make back the invested armor damage from killing that animal. So in essence you need a cheap and a good set of armor. Taking damage to armor if you have taken on too much or screwed up is fine and i see this as a natural risk to keep pve interesting as far as possible.
From my perspective having to change to cheap hunting armor is just tedious. It is extra time invested to set it up and a few unnecessary clicks every time you want to go hunting before you can do what you actually wanted to. If you want to have it that way just implement hunting gear. That gear could provide some armor protection versus animals. Alternatively ranger gear might be changed to provide such a boon. There could even be tiers of that gear. Like (cheap) ranger boots providing protection against armor damage from small animals like badger and fox. Ranger/hunting (cheap) cape providing protection against bats and flying stuff. A (more expensive) hunting pants helping versus boars. Costly hunting chest helping with bears. And so on.
Another issue is that as good gear gets more and more difficult and expensive to make and maintain, people who automate the whole process get less punshied by armor damage than people who actually do the stuff by hand. Bottomline is that people get punshied for going out and interacting with the wildlife.
Arguing for armor damage just for the sake of realism and immersion while ignoring the fact that in real life there are ways to maintain your armor like reparing replacing and salvaging is hypocrisy.
Instead of just plain damage and repair i suggest "injuries" to armor. Those "injuries" to armor would work much as the injuries to players already in the game. Reducing hp, buffs, effectivity of armor. So lets say a fox might pierce your boots with a bite if you are unlucky, adding a debuff to the item that needs to be removed by some kind of repair. Much like a hole in your real boots, that debuff could make you get wet feet or reduce stats, hp, soak. You could plug that with a piece of cork and some glue. Bigger animals cause more serious stress to armor. They might tear, shred rip your armor all reducing its effectivity adding up to the point of breaking the item sooner or later. You have the choice to repair it with the appropriate piece of leather, metal, glue, wax or cloth or any combination. Some more serious injuries might even be permanent. Fighting really dangerous animals could have such a side effect. I would feel that system would be a lot more immersive and cool than just having stuff fall apart and redo it.
You could even tie that system to combat moves. A headbutt for example could have a chance to put a dent into your helmet. A reckless attack would leave you open to counterattack and thus puts you at risc of slashing your chestpiece. Parry might have a chance to dull your blade. At the end, armor would actually be some kind of combat diary. So many possibilities.
TL,DR: Armor damage works different for pvp and for pve. While i agree that armor damage is an opportunity for immersion, I think there needs to be a better way of managing it.