Yeah this whole idea is pretty stupid...give the people that already have an advantage more of one..riiiiiight...
The point above is very good - what happens when all the 1600+ rated teams are in epics, and someone that hasn't done arena before tries to get involved...how on earth is he ever going to get a rating to get epic gear if he can't get a rating because he can't beat any teams that already have their epic gear.
Arena would be a lot better IMO if it did a gear point check on everyone on the team as you queued, and only played you against someone with "relatively" similar points worth of gear.