what pray tell are you looking for?

live arena is coming very soon, in the beta stages right now. 

My two cents on this: 

Is the Raid PvP system amazing? No. 

Is it somewhat enjoyable? I think so. 

What kind of PvP experience are you looking for? One that rewards a player's knowledge of game mechanics and player skill.  

If so then PvP should allow you to choose a team from any Champion in the game, all @ 6* / lvl 60. Once you have your team you should be able to equip them with any available piece of gear, maxed stats, all masteries, blessings, glyphs, etc. Then you have your match against an opponent who pulled their team from the same pool. This allows everyone an equal opportunity and winning or losing is based on the player's ability.  

As someone who's played MMOs since SWG... my experience has been that when you take an RPG game built around charter development such as Raid, where everything has been designed from a PvE perspective, then try to add a serious PvP element to it... it always ends badly. 

The issue with a PvE game that attempts to add PvP will always be balance. In a PvE environment the Developers can narrow down the variables since every encounter is “scripted”. If by chance a build or strategy
comes along that turns out to be imbalanced then they can "tweak" the encounter, skills, damage, etc. 

 When you have an RPG game built around charter development there are so many variables that it makes balance almost impossible. This is hard enough with a game that allows a single character. When you throw in entire teams it becomes almost impossible. When a game has imbalanced PvP.... players lose their minds. Look at the situation with UDK... we're coming up on almost a year and there are still new post weekly that turn into "free-for-all" because of a single champion.. 

So you want each match to take 30 minutes to set up?  Live Arena does allow for strategy counter play etc.  Much more than anything else atm.  I've also been surprised by some crazy off meta comps as well.  Your idea sounds like wayyyy too much 

I am missing all of the top 5 meta champs right now. But it's okay, because player skill and my knowledge of game mechanics is still the factor that lets me compete.

I would not want any mode where I got to choose an arena team from all 700 champs, and use whatever gear I wanted. Basically end up a terrible version of meta versus meta counter. And really, it's not that type of a game. I collect my champs, build a roster, farm gear, and then use everything I earned to try and compete. Someone else spends money, opens a ton of shards, collects their champs, and maybe doesn't farm enough gear cause they've got nearly every legendary in the game.

I enjoy having a big gear edge on people. That makes such a huge difference, and it isn't one I want to give up in any arena mode just so I don't have to play against Taras and Marichka without my own fake Taras and Marichka.

@harleQuinn  I agree with you 100%. I am happy with the present state of PvP in Raid and I am looking forward to giving live Arena a shot.

My post was in response to the request for "true PvP" without any definition of what that would be.

Since the OP didn't bother to offer any examples of what they would consider to be "true PvP" (something that seems to be an ongoing theme here) I attempted to offer a version that I felt could offer a fair competition between one player's knowledge / skill and another player's knowledge / skill.

As far as I can tell there are really only 2 possible versions of "PvP" in raid's current configuration. What we have now is Pokeymon Go or the Pet Battles in WoW. While knowledge and skill do play a role, the major factor is who has "caught or bought" the right champions and looted the better gear. I don't have a problem with this version.

I just proposed a version that is more akin to chess... the players are evenly matched so the only advantage they have is their knowledge and skill. 

If someone else has a suggestion for a different mode of PvP (that wouldn't break the game in the name of balance) I'd love to hear it.

Ah, I see.

i