Sounds like he was a good player. But if a team, in general, sees an arcblade coming from that far away you usually gun him down. And in counter to your scenario, I was playing a match last night, guy activates arcblade in close quarters near me he turns the corner and a blasted him with a shotgun once and he died (I think the name of the match was last watch or whatever that "watch" map is on Mars not the meridian bay one but the last watch one, and the area I did it in was the close quarters area of the map) and in that same match he again pulled out his arcblade and I gunned him down with my auto rifle...granted I landed nothing but head shots.