This week's Rank battle has been absolutely brutal for me. I'm at tier 29, so I have been fighting to get "One Tier Up" so I can reach 30 and unlock Standard Challenges 2-5.
I thought I had solid equipment going in, but I ended up at something like 15th place as of last Friday. I used all of my appropriate Level-Boost tickets and grinded the levels and I was finally able to get into 6th place (the minimum required to move up one Tier) yesterday... But then I was dropped down to 7th this morning. I played through all of the remaining courses in the tour to unlock a few more Level-Boost tickets, focused on Luigi's Mansion, and I was able to increase my score by about 2,000 to slide up into 5th place. I have enough of a buffer that I should be okay at this point. Whew, too close for comfort.
I spent sooo much time on MKT this this week. Trying to grind for the frenzies needed to get high scores should only be done once Rank Battle. Doing it multiple times with different loadouts required way more time than I should be putting into this game. I really don't give a fuck about the next few weeks. I just wanted to get to 30 so I can start chipping away at the next batch of Challenges.