GC was this intentional??!?!?!!?

We changed the way we itemized PvP gear between seasons 4 and 5. The largest change is that resilience uses up much more of an item's budget, where previously it was almost bonus. We also stopped adding bonus armor (extra armor beyond what a cloth, leather, mail or plate would have at a certain item level) because it was causing some weird issues for certain characters, like Feral druids. The next few seasons should follow this new design, though of course we might decide to change that design for some pressing reason. Since we figured very few players would keep their level 70 gear over level 80 gear, we figured it was a fine time to change things across the board.

We do think it is odd that armor penetration in general is more valuable against characters with the least armor, and that is something we might change in the future.

Q u o t e:
The issue is really the static armor penetrations like Expose Armor and Sunder which would seem to be what GC is referencing in his post. Simple solution would be to just convert those to straight percentages as well and then the issue will also be resolved and balanced. So what percentage of armor should those abilities remove? Easiest thing would be just to balance them around how much armor they remove from a raid boss.

Yes, well put. It would take a lot of rebalancing to convert Sunder and Expose over to a percentage, but it would solve some problems too.

At a higher level, I don't think the answer to letting clothies survive longer is to make cloth more like mail. Either clothies are fragile or they're not. If they're fragile, then they need tools to be able to survive when the bad man with the axe or daggers comes a calling. If tons of armor is just something all players need, then we're spending a lot of extra dev time to itemize four tiers of armor (cloth, leather, mail and plate). I exaggerate, but I think you get the point.