There's a problem inherent with the way arenas work at the moment: they can be exploited reasonably easily. Here are the fixes require to quell the current state of hacking involved with most arena problems:

1) Once you enter an arena (meaning you hit that "Enter Arena" button when one popped), you cannot change your gear except your weapon slots. You are in your gear, you are not going to switch what helm you are wearing, etc. Normal weapon swapping is allowed because it is a supported game mechanic.

2) Personal ratings no longer reset when you leave/join a team. You had a 2200 personal rating in 2s and dropped the team to power up a friend of yours? Fine, but you have a 2200 personal rating on the team, and that will have consequences (soon to be discussed).

3) The team match-making system will be changed to use the combined item worth of all equipped armor (not gear, just the armor since it cannot be switched once you agree to enter a match). So, if you have full s4 and your team mate has all s2 and you are just pumping him high enough to get weapons or shoulders or w/e, you will face teams with s3/s4 comparable gear, since that is the weighted average of your gear's weight.

4) Wins/Losses will be against the average of the team's personal rating, then applied to your personal rating. This means, if you are a 1300 teamed with a 2200 rogue and you face a team that averages out to 1800 personal rating and you lose, you will only lose 1-4 personal rating, but your 2200 rogue will lose 40 (or however much an 1800 loss would cause a 2200 to lose).


These changes make it MUCH harder for people to "pump-sell" ratings to undergeared scrubs. That is, it makes it MUCH harder for a 2200 rogue in full s4 to get a s2-wearing resto shamang up to 1850 to get his weapon and MUCH harder to get to 2200 to get his shoulders. Also, this makes win-trading much harder as matchups are now determined against armor, so someone cannot simply log onto his alts and his mains at 5AM and queue and expect to ever get those two teams matched against each other since the gear is completely not comparable and getting into the same rating bracket would be that much harder.

Just some thoughts on how Blizzard could improve their system so that it would have fewer loopholes for cheating and would even out the match-making system for legitimate players.