question about arena snipers

Recently I've been able to climb to the top of my fleet shard. Twice now I got sniped out of #1 down to #2 by the same guy. I think we share payout, so sniping is fair game imo if you want moar crystals. Be smart about your approach, park yourself in a battle 5 minutes before payout, collect prize.

Btw, how do y'all message people about shard chat? I click on the ranked players in the leaderboard and the message option is greyed out, wth.