If you balance the game from the top down, the rest will inherently be balanced because any perceived imbalances at lower levels are, almost always, rooted in a lack of some form of skill. Not trying to offend anyone, but that is just the way it is.
At lower levels you can overcome "imbalances" by playing better, but at the highest echelon of play this is not possible because the skill difference is too marginal.
For example, what happens if I get automatched against some rank 10,000 1v1 player and I beat him with nothing but Pios and AT guns. Does that means Pios are OP? He might think so, but it was his inability to counter my strategy, not Pios being imbalanced, that caused him to lose.
Top level players generally have the game knowledge to counter, react to, theorycraft, and ultimately overcome most things by playing well. When a particular strategy sticks out as unbeatable (or nearly so) (current CalliOP and M1919A6 I'm looking at you) then we have an issue in the game - because player skill cannot overcome something that is simply too strong from a design point of view...
Hopefully this post makes sense, I am typing it while formulating a better post in response to the OP but that is the way I see it. Everyone in the community matters, especially when it comes to the game being fun or not as well as if certain strategies are way harder to counter than pull off (also a potential problem). But the bottom line is that the game needs to be balanced from the top down so that, ultimately, it is balanced for everyone.
I sincerely hope that the people who posted in the first 4 pages or so get to read this.... although some who are already lost in a whirlpool of bias would never get it.
Relic Entertainment
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