Hey, longtime reader on the forum in general but not a big poster - I'm sorry if I'm in the wrong discussion. I tried to find a post on the topic I write about below (whose purpose is to seek insight), but the closest I could find was a 2023 post about restructuring the Legend rank, which is not what I'm trying to get at below. I recently ranked up to Legend 1 after not playing for a few years–I played a lot of hours in the 2014-2020 era, then started back up a few months ago. I came back at Field Marshal or Commander (can't remember which), and I now play exclusively MM. The main meat of what I'm talking about is this: Before ranking up to Legend, I played MM with other players equivalent to my rank or just below (General was the lowest rank I saw in MM battle when I was Generalissimo). Regardless, I never saw a Legend in a MM battle until I hit the Legend 1 rank. Going from a top three finisher in almost every single battle and then ranking up to Legend 1 (and here, I want to make clear that I was like 1,600,100 exp [a little baby legend] lol), is a massive, massive change in gameplay that I couldn't have had the chance to encounter. So, if anyone has any advice or insight, how do I effectively play in a battle with Legends 50+ ranks higher when I'm just a Legend 1? Is there any nuance to MM that would allow me to play with only Legends 1-20 (this range is just an example, any numbers could be chosen here)? Or, how can I practice in such a way that I can actually make a dent in a battle with a map filled with Legend 78s, Legend 36s, Legend 29s, etc.? I've made lots of mistakes with my garage in upgrading things that I shouldn't have for the sake of expanding my tank (because I've always pretty exclusively been a railgun user except for a shaft phase around mk5 ranks that I'm not proud of). So, for example, I upgraded turrets in the past to mk7 to try them despite never having used them before, leading me, of course, to the viscious circle of me not liking them...because I'm bad with them. All that to say that my tank is not fully upgraded so I'm Legend 1 and still at 9245 gear score with my current mainly used mk8 items: Wasp, Viking, Railgun, Hammer, plus Brutus or Crisis; my protections are in desperate need and are next on the list. If all of this is irrelevant, sorry, it's just for context on the type of player I am. Just to reiterate the big question, does anyone have any advice on how in the world I navigate MM battles with players leagues ahead of me?

Why fix something that isn't broken. There're obviously things that always need to be worked on and tweaked in the game like Ricochet and Vulcan being absurdly powerful and the overdrives becoming more useful than the actual turrets themselves - which are what the game was originally about - plus a lot of little things. The devs shouldn't be focusing on something big like this when there's no need to, like they're just doing it for fun and to mix things up a bit. I just want to play the game I signed up for... The same thing's happening as it did a few years ago with the massive overhaul they did when they lost a lot of players. The players and maps they had in the game before this test (16v16; big maps) worked so keep what works and fix what doesn't. Not the other way around.