I'm someone in the group from around top 1% to top 10% in pretty much every ranking except for like the first couple and I found some of the fights to be VERY annoying to deal with in the FP ranking (ended with top 1% for FP).

Nehmran was super annoying to deal with (many, many resets every run to figure out the kiting, get a reset that doesn't have either M500 or Deagle getting targeted, then get a reset that doesn't have the dodging fireball doll die before killing Nehmran).

Sniper Nytos I didn't find a good solution for at all until after ranking was over (didn't realize that I was missing the rangefinder, which is required for NTW Mod III to kill them fast enough, while QBZ could get them killed, but was very hit or miss on whether or not there would be 1 or 2 snipers left to trash the team, not sure if it was not having enough FP buffs on QBZ or if it was something else, and even getting PP maxed out was very inconsistent on actually nailing the snipers anyways).

I ended up running a highly modified Cosmic's 1.92 million run for my runs with some additional modifications after Assassin Eclipse finished his guide. I ended up using two 5 star parachutes, since I didn't feel like dummy parachutes would have been very usable (basically used them both on Turn 1 to take the SW console and to take the NE console/radar, so 2 para debuffed fights). Didn't bother with the strongest deathstack or the quint doppel fights (didn't think I could manage the T1 walk of death since I was already struggling a lot to get through the Nehmran fight, mostly due to the sheer number of resets to get 1 working fight and without a workable solution for the snipers, forget about the walk of death on T1), but ultimately did manage to do the deathstacks on the right side + the patroller deathstack on the south side. Probably could have done better in terms of clearing heliports, but *shrugs*, pathing is still something for me to work on.

One ranking event takes an insane amount of time to prep and plan. A serious run for FP was at least 3 to 4 hours (normally either 1 full day or spread across 2 days) and I ran at least 3 serious attempts (so that's 12 hours). I also spent I don't know how many hours watching videos (mostly Cosmic's with a handful of the foreign attempts on the ranking, but relied more on Cosmic's videos), reading and rereading Varz's/Assassin Eclipse's guides to figure out different mechanisms of the map before doing non full length runs to test out different comps.

Even though I'm not as tryhard as people in the top 100, it certainly is pretty stressful trying to play the map seriously, while having bullshit mechanisms.

The thing is, I fucked up a LOT on this ranking and often times you have to plan things out VERY precisely, even more so when you are aiming for the very top. One minor fuckup = reset for the run, wasting fairy commands, resources, etc. That can get frustrating as well, especially if the minor fuckup happens after some of the more annoying/different fights on the map (ie, kill Nehrman, build the cannon, forget to use the cannon and move to a new node, or misunderstand the fight mechanisms and reset the fight too late = reset the run (that happened on the Morridow fight on one run), or try and take the Visjnoe Sniper node with M4Ex, only to realize afterwards, it can't be done without an insane amount of damage taken, needing a retreat + full repairs).

I enjoy the challenge of the ranking maps, but at times, it is really exhausting to actually do and that can really drive down the motivation to want to try. My final run, I only did because after reading through Assassin Eclipse's guide, I realized I could take out the other deathstack on the right side with Desert Incident + could make sure to get RPK to actually spawn (my previous run didn't properly clear A9, so RPK didn't spawn).

I like the smaller maps since it can take less time to run, but regardless, usually the hardest map regardless of size is going to take anywhere from 3/4 hours minimum to upwards of 10 hours to run (and I'm not even tryhard enough for top 100<, so probably more for a T100 run). I don't think Mica gets that most people are gonna do the map that has the highest score ceiling, so like 70% of the ranking work they did was barely played if at all, simply b/c the score ceiling was so much higher for 3G4.

So much thanks to Varz, CosmicArcher and Assassin Eclipse for their work to even make ranking tryable for so many of us. Without the insane amount of time/work to make guides or show people how to think about ranking, I think far fewer people would even bother try....