Leveling the playing field in instanced PvP

The main problem I see with this in the context of Ashes is that the class design will be RPS and I'd assume that this balancing would even influence small party pvp too. And so if everyone has the "same" gear, you'd just have autolose and autowin matchups (if the skill lvl is the same).

How did GW address this? Were all the classes just able to kill everyone else w/o much issue?

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And Lineage 2 just had a gear upper ceiling on its arenas, but the gear still mattered and there was no strict equalization. And L2 has a big pvp influence on Ashes. It also had an rps 1v1 balancing, so some "paper" classes were able to win out against "scissors" classes through better gear sometimes.

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I'm talking about equal player skill and we don't quite know the extent of ability balancing. To me "1v1 will be rps" sounds exactly like "an archetype will be weak against some and strong against others". So I'm not exactly sure that some archetype will be able to outbuild a losing matchup.

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Yes, but as I keep saying, at the highest lvl of skill (which arenas bring out) the rps will be the most prominent, if you keep the gear equal. Just as those top skill players know ways to try and outplay a stronger archetype, the top lvl players of said archetype would know those counters and would then use their own character in its best way. And that best way is stronger, because of the rps balancing.

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https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Arenas
Arenas will have 1 man, 3 man, 5 man and possibly 20 man Free-For-All (Deathmatch) group sizes.[4]

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I think it's good because it lets people get around the rps balancing. Augments might do that, but we don't know for sure rn. But I know for sure that gear can, because it's been done before.