[quote=@MelonHead]
<Snipped quote by Vordak>

In theory yes, in practice no.

Rule of cool wins out in Arena fights, that and the balancing element of T1.
[/quote]

But how much those two affect the fight is up to the participants. Why not turn theory into practice?

Prepping only complicates the matter further. Let me explain why i think so.

Lets say, you have a kevlar vest and a magic projectile. But what does prepping a that magic projectile [i]actually[/i] do? Will it be able to break through the vest or not, even if unprepped it was so weak it couldn't even bruise the wearer? And the opposite, what if the defender preps against a projectile powerful enough to penetrate and fast enough to land a solid hit?

IMHO, preps should scale with the abilities predetermined physical damage, as it was in Leeroy's Everlasting arena, not some conceptual quantity that doesn't correlate with any other type of measurement.