It's the time of year for lists and well...
First we have unbalanced teams: Honestly all you need to do is divide teams up by some factor. I don't care if it is by Gear, rank, prestige, or (even better) their score last game.
Trinkets and damage resistance: Lets face it, the only reason HP trinkets are such a big factor is that wearing a set of armor that statistically says "tanky" doesn't actually tank damage. HP trinkets seriously mess with class balance strikers aren't supposed to be able to tank more hits that a guardian but just slap on some Pentas and there you go, now you have more speed, damage, and HP than a guardian. Remove the HP trinkets and buff armors to actually do their job.
Maps and number of players: Shoving a dozen players onto a small map isn't good, all that will happen is that one team will get spawncamped. At least on larger maps the exit to spawn is so large it is hard to hold a team in.
Snow/ice/recon footsteps: Guardians and strikers have no trouble with these maps but recons are severely easy to pick out. The whole point of being invisible is to not be seen, yet when your footsteps give you away..... you stop having fun.
Unbalanced armors: More specifically Chaos and BK sets. Not only do these sets make LD monotonous and repetitive, it also stifles the market for new armors. This is woefully obvious with the GU gear, after all what is the point of getting any new gear if BK and Chaos fill a player's needs better.
Class balance: I just wonder if the guys who developed LD have actually played it or playtest new armors out before releasing them.
AT: A big topic in LD since it began with no real right answer. In my opinion I think the top 50 LD players automatically have AT locked off, this way the pros get forced to use AT but the lower ranked and newer knights can choose to use AT.
A reply to you good sir....
1) Unbalanced teams
Yeah this sucks. Need some sort of sorting mechanic to prevent civax, polyphobia, glocca, otsdalva, remet, and tmdals from being on one team and the other team being a bunch of nabs
2) Ehhh....trinkets gonna trinket.
3) 12 players in 3 point map? Thats fun stuff, it doesnt always get spawncamped. Barely, actually. Just ends up with more rectangar green/yellow/red/purple blood drops being spilled.
4) Footsteps on snow maps make logical sense, but it does give recons a significant disadvantage. I wouldn't mind this getting removed.
5) Unbalanced armors....BK and chaos is OP, but OOO cant do anything to fix this without p/#!%ng off the vast majority of LD players who spent lotsa money UVing their stuff to perfection. I guess they could reduce BK dmg bonus to med and get rid of the silly MSI bonus, but that would tick too many people off. Only solution would be to buff other stuff to have more defense, universal bonuses, and perhaps introduce lines of armor with 3 specialized defense types to go for defense. Best solution IMO would be to reduce the amount of health BK and chaos stuff gives by 2 points, to make it more fair. Everyone knows that health is worth more than defense in LD.
6) Classes like striker, recon, guardian, or sword, gunner, bomber, etc? Not sure here, but the LD class abilities of striker, recon, and guardian seem quite balanced. And bombers should be getting an update sometime (the mad bomber set is too big of a loose end to leave)
7) First, AT in LD is for losers.
Now, how would you find the top 50 players? Perhaps w/l ratio, but that would have to have been there since LD began to give a true sense. I recall Dutch suggesting that after a player has accumulated 10 or so hours of LD play (maybe 20 or 30), AT will automatically be disabled. Gives noobs a chance to kind of learn, while experienced players get to grow a pair and fight without assistance.