Rank 9 requires completion of 2 raids and dungeons. Rank 10 requires all the raids, dungeons and at least 1 GM clear. It is all interaction past the point you are at.

Yes, you are not allowed to ascend through the [b]very optional[/b] guardian ranks because you choose to not do a one-time-only-but-only-on-that-rank task. The only people who care about those are the ones who set the min guardian rank in the ingame ftf high.

lol that’s funny. You are being penalised in a co-operative game because you can’t get to a high rank solo? You’re -blam!- once you realise that higher ranks require you to do all the raids then.

There are ways you could do it without a mic, but you'd be making it much harder than it needs to be. You could have another person call out when they're about to shoot the node and just stay near someone when fractured to make sure they remove it at 7 stacks. The biggest problem would be with the glyph call outs. Only think I could think of is you would need to wipe until you were glyphtouched so they could tell you. Although, if you memorised where each glyph was, you would be able to do the whole mechanic yourself.