A few things: 3.2k+ historically was where players could expect to shift from normal skill to high skill games (this is/was an actual metric of the old system and you can still (?) see it in your matches on your dotabuff if you have your steam profile public. Let me tell you, when I was grinding and was right there on the cusp and getting normal skill and high skill games, the difficulty of those high skill games was much higher and they were not at all fun for a 3k pleb like me. Keep on mind this was all literally at the same mmr. By the numbers, since 3k ala legend is/was the largest bracket and essentially the middle of the pack bracket skill-wise, the skill gap between high legend into ancient and a low to middle legend can be quite large compared to someone of average skill. If I had to guess, the games in this part of legend are matching people that are executing all or close to all mechanics of their role even if not perfectly with people who may be straight up not executing multiple portions of mechanics required by their role but have a lot of game knowledge and game sense. Middle of 3k always felt like that point where you either chose to learn the underlying mechanics of the game and execute them every game or accept that you play dota for fun and don’t care about w/l.