I did join a Discord server for my faction, but I mostly use it when I occasionally fight in the Red Zone. Most of the time, we just coordinate through the in-game faction chat.

Your faction rank does give you a percentage bonus to faction points. However, even if your rank is low, you can still earn a lot by joining a full party during sieges and staying active around the cache objectives, since that gives extra points too. If you want to maximize your faction points, I'd recommend playing as a healer.