I've been asked to lock this by the original poster and am going to do so, if only because it's gone way off-topic.
I did just want to make shameless use of my ability to have the last word here, though. 
I'd recommend that Wordmaker and others who feel that the Global Defence Reduction (and/or other recent changes to the game) was made for PvP reasons rather than the stated PvE reasons keep an eye open for the next instalment of the 'Ask a Developer' series, in which I believe Statesman will once again address these issues. With luck, it should be posted within a week.
Thanks.
He doesn't mean those emotes.
By typing "/e looks around" in the chat box, you get a thought bubble over your head with the words "looks around" in it. In the chat window, this appears as "Generichero looks around". So, when we're roleplaying, we use this to denote actions that aren't available in the game's emote animations. This function is what doesn't work in the Arena.