I unfortunately can't answer this without bias, but I'll still give my opinion on the matter. I personally have 4865. I think the Xbox max is 4870? I'm only missing rank 3 doubles wins and doing doubles is a nightmare since everyone learned Bungie added grmioire to it (IBs/NLBs for days, DDoS'ing, etc.). I get so much shiz from a lot of people saying I wasted my time because it means nothing, I'm a try-hard, I have no life, yada yada. But I've been playing since day one. I'm somewhat of a completionist, and I simply viewed grimoire as a parallel to Xbox achievements (which I have all of them for Destiny as well). It gave me something to do when my raid/crucible friends weren't on. Now, I'm definitely more tiered to PvE and am quite skilled (nowhere near The Legend Himself or those similar, but still quite good), and am decent at best in crucible, but that's very situational. My breakdown of the matter is this: most of the grimoire doesn't necessarily require skill, just time. But there are some that do. Like all the crucible modes that require 100 wins. Especially rumble. It's not as easy as it seems, even more so since TTK. So if you get those under your belt, you have some level of skill. In conclusion? Not necessarily a measurement of skill, but like the OP, I've found that more times than not, the higher grimoire guardians were more reliable both in PvE and PvP. And one last thing. Unless you actually make an attempt to earn the grimoire, don't bash those who do for it.