As an avid player of team battles (over 1k battles played) I am sad to see this game mode go. I was playing team battles when they were consistently played by a decent portion of players and clans. The alternative game mode of attack/defense brought an interesting way to play to the game, and for a while I would log in exclusively to play team battles. Then skirmishes were introduced and/or became more popular and the team battle population faded into nothingness. The team battle removal has been a long time coming, but I hope that we can still take portions of the game mode and re-introduce into some clan-oriented formats. I would love to see a clan-oriented team battle format enter the game. Possibly some kind of ranked season that offers bonds, gold, credits, styles, etc... something that would closely mimic the ranked team battles mode. And in the off-season just offer it casually as another tab within the skirmishes window.
Just take away the large swings of PR because that was a large reason players would not play, many of my clan mates at the time were unwilling to play because on a loss, they would lose 100+ PR and would very slowly make it back.