Were you ever the kind of person to spam up skills? I look at solo ranking as killing two birds with one stone. I rise in rank, albeit slowly, but I also side-step having to dedicate time to practicing certain things. Obviously it's more viable for some classes than others.

One change: Want to say the ranking bonus for a group of 2 is larger than what it used to be. Still not as good as 3, but better than it once was.

Also, I want to say mercs/pets count as a group mate now. Or maybe half as good as a real PC. Something like that.

Another mitigating factor: the fewer players there are, the more likely your preferred ranking area is to be unoccupied.

If you hate ranking, one option is to limit yourself to combos that have an easier time of it than most. This assumes there's some overlap between "the set of combos I'm interested in playing" and "the set of combos that are easy to rank".