wich mission was it ?
As a tier 6 Hive I have to relay on the plague and its fart cloud for CQC outside of that I am fucked.
as any hive of any lvl.
truly effective hive i have encounter find their strenght in contamination and for a good one, plague is usually used.
rak can be a problem at any lvl if you don't have the good characters/weapons to counter him. lot of his weapons can melt a foe pretty quickly regardless of the lvl.
you can't really consider you a rank 6...
you have knowledge of the game, and it can make the difference. well, obviously less difference than being OS by a punch of course
but believe me, even is they are few, there is low rank who can handle high ranks. wich is not so surprising when you see how so much high ranks are bad.
yes, they should remove pvp bonus, but... people would not stand to be beaten by noobs whereas they are lvl35635 but are still unable to adapt cqc...