First time ever doing RTA, though my account is \~5 years old or so.

Things that I have noticed in my admittedly fairly limited number of matches:

* I am not smarter than the recommended hero picker. I went 6-4 in my placements because I thought I knew better than the recommended, I was wrong. I barely won the matches that I did and completely got outdrafted on the others.
* As others have said, at these "low" ranks draft matters more than gear on your units.
* If your opponent is like me and mostly using the recommended choices you can get a feel for what they are going to pick and save your ban protect for something that either counters half their team or something they will have trouble dealing with. Case in point: Recommended likes to have you pick both Arbiter Vildred and Lady of the Scales back to back. If you are first pick you can then easily ban protect Hecate.
* Don't forget you have to place your units after selection, I know its obvious but I didn't realize I could do that for the first couple of matches.

My bans were Notos/Setsuka if I was first pick, and Notos/R&L if I was second pick. Usually R&L would be banned by the opponent so my usual first pick was Byblis.

I know only 29 matches isn't enough to make sweeping statements, but from my perspective as a first time RTA player the recommended basically won me all my matches. I am not knowledgeable enough of the game to know if it was the quality of the gear on my units or just the recommended draft that ultimately allowed me to win. I have included the major picks of the gear on the units I used during this climb.

For those who are still trying to climb with the \~9 or so hours that are left this would be my advice:

* Use the recommended choices but don't just pick from those 3 randomly. The game likes to still recommend Lady of the Scales/Vildred even after the opponent has picked Hecate. It also likes to recommend Blue Ludwig after the opponent picked Belian.
* Blue Ludwig is incredibly powerful, but Belian hard counters him. Also Zio pairs incredibly well with him to take first turn and have him AoE silence the opponent. Its even funnier if you can manage Zio/Bludwig/Harsetti to surprise them with your whole team taking the first turn.
* Ban protect Hecate works surprisingly well because your opponent gets funneled into Arbiter Vildred/Lady of the Scales a lot from the recommended.
* Don't always pick what recommended says for a ban. It has never recommended me to ban Lone Crescent Bellona, but not doing so would lose me matches. The opponent never banned mine when I played her and lost because of it.
* You can sometimes force your opponent to pick Eye of the Abyss Fumyr to counter your ban protected Boss Arunka. Use this to your advantage to make the rest of your draft function 3v3.5 as Fumyr doesn't do much on her own for the opposing team. This way you can ban one of their actual threats.
* The two matches that Setsuka was in, she was the deciding factor. Do what you will with that.
* Estelle is incredibly strong and works in any team, I wouldn't necessarily say always pick her but she was in 85% of my matches on both sides.
* Similar to Estelle, Ruele of Light is always a strong pick and can ruin your opponents day. I even picked her into Hecate because dual invulnerability is just so strong.
* I am not sure what all you get for free to pick from units you don't own, the only one I ever used was 

I would say that if I can manage getting to Masters having never done RTA anyone can, but I feel like I am probably underestimating my gear quality on some level to completely give the wins to the recommended units. Regardless, good luck out there getting the skin!

RTA musings from a first time RTA player