Originally Posted by Vain
I don't see why this matters. If even the top teams can't get shoulders, it means they won't be fighting other teams with shoulders either, so it'll still be even. Gear being harder to get affects both teams playing in an arena battle equally if their ratings are similar, so the net effect there is zero. This will also have no effect on who gets gladiator/duelist/etc. titles, as that is percentage based.
The people this does affect are those who are playing solely to get gear and who don't care about playing for the competition.
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The big issue that leaps to mind here though is alternative sources of gear. If PVE gear is superior in a certain slot to the next best alternative to the unavailable PVP gear then you end up with the old situation of having to do high end PVE content to maximise competitiveness in PVP, generally accepted as a less than ideal situation. I wouldn't expect this to be a major issue with the S4 shoulders in this example, it's assumedly a pretty small amount of stats compared to the S3 ones, but as a general principle the risk is there for future developments.