I'd suggest trying usenet first. I found it far more friendly.
Sign up for frugal usenet. Sonarr, radarr, prowlarr, nzbget. Use trash-guides.info to do your set up correctly. No VPN needed since it's over ssl. It's cheaper than a VPN. And if you're torrenting I'd still use a VPN, despite what that other guy says.
I joined PHD but couldn't get my ratio up since there is no one downloading. Like, literally no one in anything besides brand new shit.
I joined PHD recently since it's one I could get into without an invite. There is a lot of content, but almost no one is downloading. As a result, I can't build up my ratio so I can download anything. Imo, these places go against the spirit of torrenting and it seems like they can't even function properly when people only download brand new content.