Up until your in the top tier the pvp ranking is very much just getting thrown into a tumbler full of garbage, getting beaten against the walls for a while, and hoping it spits you out in the right direction.

I'm only in gold, don't really play that much, but still get teamed up with people that maybe have 3 or 4 career wins. You'll get 10 game losing streaks where all you can think at the end is "did they really think funneling in 1 at a time versus a full team was going to work?"
and then you'll get 5 wins in a row and jump 3 ranks in the snap of a finger

my wife got to platinum accidentally not having 3 skills on her bar including her limit break, it's just luck of the draw