Basically I think that in order to foster a genuine competitive scene and support what appears to be an attempt to become an esport, there needs to be gameplay distinctions between casual and ranked. In counter strike for example (when it was good), you can pass through your teammates in casual mode, but in competitive (ranked) your character is solid and this makes things harder as you can fall to an enemy because your teammate got in the way, and also the other way around (not that this will work for CC at all, again just an example). The damage and HP situation is identical between modes in CS apart from armor being automatically applied/bought in casual and can only carry 3 utilities instead of 4. Crystalline Conflict will benefit from gaining ruleset/gamplay distinctions between Casual and Ranked, with ranked players then being able to take pride in playing a harder ruleset mode. Basically under this change to casual, you would now only get the 'privilege' to use discretion to go hunting to the enemy's backline in specific moments when your team is actually up against the wall fighting on the crystal at your end. Backline hunting indeed can seal a win, but this advanced thing should become something you only have to contend with when you step up to the 'advanced' mode of Ranked. After this change would be implemented, I would no longer feel the need to refer to it as 'powergaming' because it would only take place in the ranked ruleset mode where it belongs.

On top of this rule tweak to Casual, perhaps a rule tweak could also be done to Ranked itself whereby you can no longer see enemy Limit break information etc, to improve the harder nature and add to the 'prestige'- but this may also create a greater need to add more communication options for Ranked. Implementing these rules distinctions and maybe a couple of others should attract people to Ranked and shorten queues. There would also need to be decent and exclusive rewards for ranked of course. Probably some kind of exclusive currency that doesn't have an 'end life' due to buying everything. But somehow also something that doesn't attract widespread use of cheats- so not limited time rewards. It may even be feasible to make it so you can win an extra day to your sub, once per week or two-weeks, based on some performance/results metric- because that's not entirely useful to cheater/burner accounts. Maybe a CC ranked variant of a wondrous tails book would be good, where the top or middle prize is a free extra day, if you get enough wins crossed off or something (and a few objectives like getting wins with a number of different jobs).