If you talk about about ranked mode on these forums, you will have the usual suspects chime in how the goal of the ranked mode is to give people a loss for every win. If this is true, then it implies that the ranked mode matchmaking algorithm is actually working against you. If you win too many a game then the matchmaking algorithm will make you lose a game after a game until your wins and losses are roughly the same. What is worse, my own anecdotal experience of the ranked mode seems to support this notion of a matchmaking algorithm rigged against you.
Therefore, the more you play, the more you will lose because the matchmaking is not working towards creating balanced interesting matches but rather trying to maintain an equal amount of wins and losses among the ranked player base. You might be fine with it if you just want to play the ranked mode for the friendly fire. However, if you are trying to acquire a specific rank trinket or the additional ranked points that come with it, then your ranked mode experience can become somewhat aggravating to put it lightly.
Normally to fix the above matchmaking issues is that you create an alternative steam account to help your friend go up in ranks, and then have your friend do the same for you. This is an easy way to abuse the matchmaking algorithm to create lopsided games that have a high percentage of being in your favour. Unfortunately that is not an option for someone in the ranked solo queue, and there is precious little you can do to prevent premade parties from abusing the matchmaking algorithm to their favour. Yet this does not mean that the rank of a solo queue player is at the mercy of premade parties, or just blind luck. It just means that you have to understand how the matchmaking works, its flaws, and how you could claw yourself whatever miniscule slight advantage you can.
In ranked season 2, my rank fluctuated just shy below the ranks of Bronze Master and Silver Master. I kept playing and playing and the number of wins and losses we roughly more or less the same. The thought of ever reaching the rank of Silver Master or going beyond it seemed next to impossible. Thus in ranked season 3 I decided to do things differently. Instead of playing just a game after a game, I practically limited myself to only playing a single ranked game a day or a few several hours apart of one and the other. Doing it this way, I managed to reach the rank of Silver Master with ease, crawled up to Gold Recruit and was just a win away from Gold Adept before I fucked things up by doing what I had done in the ranked season 2. Thus I played ranked mode for the sake of playing ranked mode and in a day I had fallen down to the rank of a Silver Adept, and the next I was back up to Silver Master, and then I fell down again, and went back up, etc… etc… etc…
Some might say it is a result of a low playerbase, but there is a tendency for the players of the last ranked match to show up again in the next ranked match. Thus if you were teamed up with a terrible player, the chances are that this player will be on your team on the next game, and the next. You might have full 5v5 teams, but in reality you are playing a 4v5 after a 4v5, and the odds are that you will lose a game after a game. You will fall down in ranks until you end up in games that are basically 1v0 in your favour - and thus you go up in ranks only to fall down yet again - a cycle that cannot be broken by just playing and playing.
Moreover, some might say that this too is a result of a low playerbase, but just as you can be teamed up with terrible players - you can also be pitted against the same premade party a game after a game. Even if your teammates know their maps, how to use their guns and abilities, there can still be a massive gap in the quality of teamwork. For example the team with a bunch of random players might have mercenaries that do not work well together, they do not know what the others are doing trying to do, while in comparison their opposition is more like a well oiled engine. What makes it worse is that the people on the random solo queue might not be allocated to play against the premade team on the next game, or the game after that. Even if you have an idea how to bring them down it is next to impossible to herd a bunch random players to work as a truly unified front. Thus you can lose a game after a game,.
Thus, the biggest thing to understand here that by playing less - I have managed to reduce the negative effect of being teamed up with terrible ranked players, and against teams that are beyond my ability to carry. I will still lose games of course, but I have been able to maintain a positive trend and actually go up in ranks with relative ease.
If you play on ranked solo queue and want to go up in ranks - then - I see no alternative to beyond playing fewer matches.
That’s about it.