Yeah, I just don't buy into this esport junk. There is no way that you can have a legit esport with a giant random number generator looming over your head. It's like saying, that soccer match was great and if God hadn't struck down two of those players with lightning for no reason, they probably would have won! And that's not even getting into class imbalance issues as you said. It just can't be on the same level as something like Quake.

Although I have great respect for Blizzard and praise them for their wisdom in addressing many problems in this game, arena is completely screwed up. So is it an esport that is inherently unfair? Fine. NOW Blizzard is trying to drag these people into battlegrounds as well. It didn't take a rocket scientist to see this would happen. Battlegrounds themselves are totally over-run with twinks - now everyone is going to "play fair" for arena?

If it were up to me I would just dump the current system entirely. I would make arena awards weapon only. I'd also make each arena tier use the SAME gear per bracket - you don't even get to use your own stuff (except weapons). I'd also probably consider just dumbing it down to class VS their own class (ala dueling tournament) but like I said, I don't like the entire arena concept anyway so I'd probably just nerf everyone's fun. =P

So in the end this is all Blizzard just chasing their tail in a problem they invented for themselves. Instead of maybe making Warsong Gulch fun or something to that effect. But now when everyone says the game has stagnated for content they can pull out "Look! new arena season!" Whee...