The problem is not understanding how to rate a candidate but understanding what the ratings will accomplish and what voting strategy should be used to get your intended outcome.
If you're looking to game the system, the the point is to make this hard. The entire point is that we're trying to understand your preference in candidates. That's all that needs to be understood. Moving your preferences around slightly has little effect on purpose. If it had large effects, like RCV has, it would violate the monotonicity criteria and make it likely for the favorite betrayer criteria to fail. Both criteria that RCV fails btw and I think most people care about these criteria a lot, even if they don't fully understand them.
