[2019] Rank grind or no?

No rental ships this season.

To OP: play as much as you enjoy. I recommend stopping after ~200 battles. If you're not close to rank 1 at that point and have better things to do — better stop and try again in the next season, hopefully with more practice. In the worst case you can now use First League flag now for the remainder of the season in all other modes, and that's good too.

I'm currently on rank 4 on my main account, 54 battles, 68.52% :)

Me too, random gets boring and your influence on outcome is smaller.

Some keep asking for skill-based mode — here it is, yes, very roughly, but still it really feels when you cross league boundaries that general difficulty jumps dramatically. That's why sometimes you keep bouncing between rank 11 and 10 — you're adjusting to difficulty. Premier league is hell (in a good way, i like challenge).

Now don't complain if in roughly skill-based mode your winrate gets closer to 50%, that's the point — you're on your skill level so to win you need to play to the fullest, use all your knowledge and skills to outsmart the enemy. to work together with your team as much as possible. You gotta sweat, cry and bleed. Now say — do you really want to always play like that? Don't you enjoy easy victories sometimes? That's the point of random PvP mode — it's random, you get varying difficulty and tier distribution.

Don't grind Ranked mode if you don't enjoy it. Get as far as you can, take a break, try again, if you feel it's your ceiling for now — that's fine. Maybe your ship does not fit well enough for current season, maybe you're not using it appropriately for that mode. If it's not fun learning and adapting and coming up with general tactics — no one forces you.