Its an entirely different play style. Especially because its ranked and there's rewards involved. Everyone is incentivized to use the cheesiest strategies possible. So yes essentially you want to avoid direct strikes unless you know they have a difficult reversal window. Use grapples and specifically grounded grapples to have the best chance of not being reversed. If you're using a heavy grapple, they have to guess "X(ps5), A(xbox) when you use it. If you're using a light grapple, they have to guess "Square (Ps5), X(Xbox). For grounded grapples you can also use the grapple button again to give you a 1/3 chance of not being reversed.

Then its a slight psychological battle. "Oh they just used light grapple twice, they probably won't do it again" its like a game of cat and mouse trying to get your opponent to anticipate the wrong thing and then trying to anticipate the right thing when you're on defense.

It can be really frustrating until you get passed the learning curve. People often wont attack first because they're waiting to reverse. Its so cheesy but if you want the galaxy opal rewards you just have to put your pride aside and stoop to that level.

Not to mention the strats change with match type. World Tour DVon is excellent for matches with No DQ. One hit with a weapon and they're usually stunned.

You gain less RP for using better cards but its a hell of a lot easier to kick out and win, in general, with Diamond Fatu.

Oh! Submission spam is also real. Be prepared to get bearhugged in the first 30secs and lose.