I finally got around to the Anarchy Battles, which are the new ranked battle modes. There are two of them, Anarchy Battle Open and Anarchy Battle Series. Open is a single match of one of the same four types from Splatoon 2: Splat Zones, Rainmaker, Tower Control, or Clam Blitz. If you win you get some rank points (I was getting about 8 points) and losing will take some away ( I was losing about 2 points). This seemed small and will change as your rank changes. My starting rank was B- due to having a higher rank in Splatoon 2.
The Series commits you to a set of matches, keeping track of your wins and losses. It ends when you get five wins or three loses, whichever happens first. Then based on how well you did you get points. You have to spend about 70 points to enter the series, but even ending 2-2 I was earning over a hundred points making this a much better way to rank up. You will also find that randos are much more likely to stay on your team in this mode as they are also in a series. What is nice is that the type of game is different for open and series, but you only have one rank. So, say I don't care for Rainmaker, then I can always avoid it and not let it mess up my rank.
I also joined some friends in online battles. This works much better that before and I got to Splat some Toons with Mop and others. You should be able to join me in a match, if it says that I am just online, it means I am queuing up. You can only join while someone is in a match, not matchmaking.