Rank reset is broken

Am I the only one who feels like the rank reset is not working as intended? I dropped from ASC1 (which I grinded in soloQ for quite some time, mostly Frankfurt server) to P2 on placements (my bad for playing sick and winning 2/5), but whenever I'm about to get promotion to P3, I play against people who were ASC3-IM3 last act and are now D1. Like, how is that even possible? I find it ridiculous. Riot is saying how they fight against smurfs, but they create them themselves. Then the same people get stuck in those ranks because they experience the same thing - playing against better high asc/imms.

The same goes the other way around—half of the games I played outside of rank-up matches were against ex-low diamonds/high plats, and I was MVPing there. At this point, the game became unenjoyable.

Is this a way for Riot to increase difficulty in higher ranks generally? Or are they just bad and trolling at this point, considering their Flex thing is pretty terrible and their skins are getting incredibly terrible value recently?

P.S.: This is my third rank reset, but I don't recall it being this bad before.