I've spent close to 400 hours in Paladins, sitting comfortingly in the middle of the Food chain; easily winning some matches, easily losing others. I've never had an issue with your matchmaking, honestly, because I realize its all in the roll of the dice sometimes.
And sure, there have been plenty of balancing changes I haven't agreed with... most recently, rendering Barik's Architectonics card useless was a major blow to a favourite character. But I survived the Androxus Dark Stalker nerf, and I realize that for a game in beta, character balance will change.
The reasons I'm taking a long break aren't those. Rather, it's because (seemingly) simple technical, gameplay, and graphical bugs continue to persist. The frequency of Chat being broken, Card images being misplaced or glitched, abilities and collision... Basically, I used to be a paladins Apologist, bringing people over from Overwatch and League of Legends, etc. But starting a few patches ago, I had to add the caveat: "But the game is broken half the time." Now with this most recent patch, bugs and glitches persist, and the gameplay "balances" are questionable.
For gamers more interested in a tightly crafted, well balanced game, I can't really recommend paladins in its current state; it's always been in beta, sure, but since I started playing (around the time Willo was added), it has never felt as buggy and unpolished as it does now.
Added to this, the glaring issues in simple presentation and UI - broken chat, incorrect images, broken death animations (Andro's punch while using shattermaw, broken 2 patches now), etc - make it hard for me to recommend the game to casual players, ones that are more interested in grabbing skins for champions and playing well beneath the meta.
And when I realized that I couldn't recommend Paladins in its current state, I further realized I probably shouldn't be playing Paladins in its current state.
