It's an evolving universe, ED is a historical timeline not just a snapshot. Surely there are going to be times when warfare is a technological stalemate/nightmare and casualties are guaranteed until the next thing comes along - as there are in real life.
Are we 100% sure this is unintentional and has to be looked at in a metagamey/OOC way?
Yes, because FD already tried to fix it once, and said they'll continue to look at it. I don't believe it'll ever be fixed in a balanced way, though, and they've created a monster that effectively nullifies the skill element of PvP in favour of loadout min/maxing. For all that people keep saying "Oh, but you can make a specific build to try to counter it" and "What's wrong with rock/paper/scissors?", the facts are that it removes fun from the game for a lot of people (myself included), no PvPer even gives Arena a second look because it's not the gameplay they want (myself included), and the end result of that will be that they eventually play the game less and less. That makes them less likely to buy the next expansion, which makes it harder for FD to keep the lights on.
Don't get me wrong - I love this game. As I said, though, I've been playing it less and less because FD are actively adding stuff that removes the fun, and it gets worse with every fix they stack upon previous fixes. That can only happen for so long before it starts to have a serious effect.
Not only that, consider the dev time involved here. They took extra time to make 2.1 "perfect". Then they ignored player feedback and released it, only to find that it was very
imperfect, so they had another stab at it. That caused more problems than it solved, so they had another stab at fixing the problems created by the release and the second go at fixing it.
How long do you think they can actually keep up this cycle of redevelopment while maintaining the planned release schedule to bring the next paid expansion in (which is essentially 90% of ED's ongoing cash infusions)?
This has to stop, in the interests of keeping the game running. Admit they got it wrong, remove the special effects, and get on with building 2.2...but for the love of all that's holy, do
something to get genuinely interested parties in the player community involved in the design process. It's painfully obvious to any of us who are also developers in our day jobs that the design and testing process for ED is badly broken.