The gear you gain through the WoW pvp system is all but useless in any pve content anyway so you're only bettering yourself for more pvp... Which i concede is sticking to the mmo stereotype of killing things to gear and kill things more effectively. However this being said it isn't the gear that makes people pvp or there would be no point in doing it at all since if you're gearing for pvp you obviously already want to experience pvp o_o

And i agree ballista can become frantic, but this only occurs when Shadows/SS/Phalanx falls off and needs reapplying, or when you don't have defensive spells at your command for some reason. At which point it becomes a race to reapply them or run away, apposed to WoW's system where its a burn fight which boils down to who can outplay their opponent or in most cases who has the better healer coupled with higher resilience rating. Neither system is great but WoW's does at least feel like it has been properly implemented and can be hectic even in 1v1 fights apposed to ffxi's "Ballista CAN get very frantic when you have two parties"