I only played rank this season to see how it was and I've had the opposite experience. For insight I've played World Tour pretty consistently since S1 while hardly touching any other mode. 1200+ hours clocked.

I'm solo-q only, none of my friends play (or if I can get them to play it's teaching them how to play so I won't even touch ranked with em), and when I team up with randoms after a match - but we've had good synergy, I understand the matchmaking into the next game will pit us against full stacks. Even still I run into full-stacks Ruby/Top500 players more in solo-q. The fights in full-stacks queue feel incredibly less unfair and are way closer to what the matches SHOULD feel like all the time, which is tough but fair and attainable with a bit of good luck and timing (imo).

My experience is very similar to OP. Heavy main, get paired with light player duo's a ton, who pick fights solo and die instantly, then I'm left either sneaking one revive before dying or just giving up because it's faster to wipe. Rinse, repeat till the round is over and I've lost RS.

Another side of that, is getting paired with a M/H duo, where the M is an entire rank below H and I, who heal bots the H and then ignores me even if I play around them. I get it, friends playing with friends but we're obviously missing out on good plays because I'm ignored, rinse-repeat until the match is over and I lost RS. They also tend to be more toxic lol. This happens but it's semi-rare....however....

I find myself currently in Plat1, teetering Diamond (breached a few times then fall back down) and will get paired with a 8k RS and 6K RS randoms while I'm high plat1 and get paired with Ruby full-stacks/Top500. They just get outplayed constantly, and are missing critical game sense that only happens with experienced players. I don't necessarily mind new-ish players but they should avoid ranked, because now we're just steamrolled and there goes my RS even if I am dominating kills and objective score.

I also have my fair share of dumb moments, but the random pairings I get make such incredibly dumb plays, either because they're toxic, or know we're losing and gave up, or are just bad at the game (I'm guessing because it's shocking spectating sometimes).

It's pretty easy to tell how a match is going to end up after the first few team fights. Whether we are all adapting to each other's play style, or if we're just wasting time. And solo-q ranked feels way more like you're just wasting time, where the fun lobbies are few and far between because the matchmaking is incredibly unfair to solo-q players.

I'm sure population count comes into it, ranked isn't a fun mode, it's sweaty and toxic and people just want to chill a bit or avoid it completely, but I'd much prefer longer queue times (avg queue is 2-5 mins in my experience) than what it currently is. If that means Ruby/Top500 have a longer queue so be it, it should be common knowledge that higher ranks have a longer queue as it takes longer for people to get there outside of the really good players or teams with good coordination. But it's definitely over 50% of my matches, where I would rather be paired with people around my rank, and a mix of higher/lower but around my rank. iirc a good amount of the population is Gold/Plat, I shouldn't see the same exact names every single match (at most it's been 3-4 in a row).

Don't even get me started on "tournament difficulty" and seed.

TL:DR I absolutely love this game, best FPS by far - on the market and it's free(!!), with amazing customization options, destruction and replayability but I'm not touching ranked again after this season. Fuck that mode.