So in about 8 weeks of 5v5 and 120 games played, my 4 shaman and holy pally friend have hit an all-time high of 1580 and have spent most of our time around 1460 or so.

The vast majority of those games have featured at least two gladiators/duelist/rivals.

Before Bliz "fixed" arena, the uber arena folks would
1) Match vs other known highly rated opponents for win-trading
2) Get a team up to a high rating, then let people who paid play 3 games, then play 7 to maintain the rating.
3) PL up a number of teams, raping the 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800 brackets, then sell the team and start over.

None of the three of these styles of play were what Blizzard wanted, and rightly so. However, these styles of play kept the uber teams mostly out of lowbieville (1300-1600 rated teams).

Now the gladiator/duelist/etcs make money off PLing teams up to ratings high enough to buy gear, and do so over and over again by putting in three mid-level players with two uberplayers. This means about 70% of the teams we've played have had players who should be in the 1900-2200 rating brackets. It is just too hard for a group of players (or one multi-boxer and a friend) who truly belong in the 1500 or 1600 bracket to beat teams like this with any consistency.

So my 420 resil, 11K HP, 900 spell damage shammies will probably be going back to the AFK arena strategy that gets us just as many points for MUCH less work.

Could Blizzard not have seen that this would occur? I've got to think the VAST majority of people who are trying their hand at arena with fairly solid teams and strategies and who get completely owned over and over again by gladiators are getting a bit discouraged.