Nope, you're describing a quasi-balance, where only the skilled will see it.
True balance would involve all players, regardless of skill and faction choice.
Nailed it. The attitude of "well, only top XX skilled players count towards balancing" is doing nothing for the over all health of the title. Should a paying customer not have a
fun experience no matter the skill level? However, Relic has never stated who they balancing/designing factions for. Casuals? Hard cores? Perhaps they are completely satisfied with their current approach and have no intentions of changing it.
There is one thing that grinds my gears the most and it is the lack of officially published numbers. There has been hundreds of posts regarding game statistics that have been gathered by a single community member. Why not publish out the numbers themselves? Without a stated intention "we want to to achieve the following" and the numbers to back it up how do we really know if balance is better? How is success being measured?
Maybe I'm just over thinking things.