Greetings!
I'm fairly new to Master Duel and didn't play much Yu-Gi-Oh! in general for the past decade - you could say I'm a complete amateur.
Now, I've done most of the solo mode stuff to get to know some more archetypes and played the current Theme Chronicles event to the point where I got all obtainable gems with the vendread loaner deck. Luckily, the loaner was actually quite good, so I didn't need to build a deck. (Got all gems with a 22:8 win ratio.)
After all of this, I want to dive into ranked. For the solo mode stuff I've used an Endymion deck, which seems to be rouge at best - and I've only got the bare basics for the deck anyway (pretty much no extra deck). But now I have no clue which deck to go for. I don't know shit about the meta game and even less about the longterm viability of decks, as I don't want to spend all my ressources on building a deck that will banned soon anyway (like, Baronne seems like something that will be banned soon). Or worse, something that is simply unfun to play.
I don't particually enjoy stun decks and I'm not into all or nothing combo decks ending on a board full of generic boss monsters (looking at the new superheavy stuff). Is there something viable to start building, ideally with a low power version to test the strategy, before commiting to pulling/crafting all cards needed? (like, Mannadium would take all my ressources and it's gamble if I'd like it)
A lot of the combat comes down to whether or not you like tweaking your build over and over. There are so many things you can change - active and passive skills, equipment, equipment augments, Skell equipment and Skell augments - all for up to 4 characters, although you have quite a bit more freedom over your main character. If you're not into that, the combat can feel slow and like you don't make much of a difference.
However, there's a new feature in the Switch version that does help with that. You now have a sort of MP bar you can spend to re-use skill without waiting for their cooldown. It's quite generous, automatically refills for each battle and can be increased even further.
That being said, you don't have this feature for Skells until you beat the entire story. Skell are overall the worst part for me to be honest. Once you unlock them, nothing else really matters in casual play. They are leagues above your ability to fight without them, but they don't scale at all with your level or any stats. Just their equipment and augments, which are more limited than for ground combat. The only thing your level does is unlocking more Skells at Lv 50 and 60. The Ares 90 - the last one I unlocked - is so strong, I basically one-shotted everything in the last chapter without even changing anything.