also, I'm rank 13 and regularly being matched with rank 40+ people, why is this? I thought you were supposed to be matched with people of similar rank
those are just levels, and since levels are primarily a measurement of how long you've been playing they don't really factor in to matchmaking very much, I'm almost level 400 and I've been in plenty of games with people under level 50 (most likely smurfs whose real MMR has caught up to them)
the reason you're encountering those people and the reason it's taking so long to find a match is probably because there just isn't a big enough pool of players around your skill level searching at the same time to pull from
also yeah I'd turn off skirmish, it might just be a placebo but it feels like you get put into games faster when it's not also trying to keep track of that