If we look it from subtier to tier it’s a small difference and this is how it should be, i.e. t7 bronze vs t7 silber, t8 gold vs t9 bronze, etc. This is how it should be + rank ofc fluctuates… it depends on a lot of things, given day and your play, current heroes meta, soloq/duoq, who you duoq with and so on.
The problem currently is that the average player(good, can play with the good players without feeling totally useless tho clearly less skilled, understanding the game, but not a beast) is not at tier 5, but in t8. The distribution is bad + the whole boosting thing and the fact that you actually need so little matches to go from subtier to the next one - leads to t8 gold players that are better than t10 bronze players (for above the grinding is so bad, that either some pros are carry them or they are good players).
SEMC fault. If no boosting (or boosting only to t6, where the players will be competent enough to understand the skill gap and not be super frustrated and useless in the fights), there will be no smurfing (or to super low degree). Better to have a good player on new account longer in the lower tiers from the current situation where it’s flooded with smurfs in all lower tiers, it’s literally multiple accounts per single person, it’s not even one or two. So the argument “we protect the lower tiers” is totally invalid.
I’ve seen some truely horrible VG bronze players in 5v5, when I’ve revised them on VGPro their stats are horrific, it does make me wander how they’ve climbed so high. Also faced a VG gold Taka in lane who basically owned our entire team, he built no defence but still managed to destroy us through positioning and mechanics was impressive.
Point being is your rank counts, it’s a good indicator of skill level but it’s clearly open to manipulation. When your playing a VG smurf it’s obvious, they always land abilites, they always push objectives and infuse at the right times they always abuse their power spikes etc etc. Anyone suggesting rank doesn’t matter is incredible naive, it does, if nothing else 5v5 proves this as tiers 8 and above carry matches when they’re playing scrubs.
