Also, because I refuse to let this go, I'm absolutely convinced that Profreshional 400 is treated as a distinct category and doesn't lump in Profreshional 300's; if nothing else, it prefers to pair you with other 400s before lower Profreshional ranks.
The other day I was playing on my alt account, doing whatever I can to get from 300 to 400, and it was a disaster. People not noticing that it was high tide and sliding straight into the "water", two or three people jumping off the top of the ship into the water while shouting "Booyah!" all the way down at the start of the wave, people bouncing around left and right in their life ring while I'm trying to save them with a Goo Tuber (and I already suck with Chargers in PVP), all three other people getting splatted during mothership as it begins to touch down... I'm not kidding when I say we went from 10/19 to 0/19 because I couldn't take on the ship alone, survive, and save them at the same time.
Eventually I determined that the best way of passing through this rank was by going rogue. If a teammate got themselves killed because they overextended waaay too much, I wouldn't save them. That sounds like an awful idea in a team based game, but the general idea was that if I saved them, it would lure a bunch of bosses too far away from the egg basket and making the quota would be too difficult. I'd make them take the walk of shame back up to the basket while I stayed nearby and took out Steel Eels, Scrappers, and Steelheads while taking out the Flyfish that spawn on the left and right (Marooner's Bay). -It totally worked, and after like 1800 points I finally broke free of 300 and got Profresh 400 on the alt account too.
And then today, on our new Dualie/Rapid/Squeezer/? waves, I played right as the shift opened because that's when it's usually easiest, and sure enough it was infinitely easier than the 300-400 grind I had the other day. I played later on in the evening on my main account, after the best-of-the-best finished their shifts, and it was just as easy.
I'm going to rule out anything account-related, such as hidden algorithms that say "This person needs to be on this team, and this alt-account needs to be paired with these players.". I'm also going to rule out the fact that this rotation was easier; the squeezer really doesn't contribute much in the wrong hands and there were plenty of times when the random weapon was something like the Tenta Brella. And I lastly want to rule confirmation bias; I've been through the 300 grind long enough to see a significant discrepancy between the skill levels.
