writing based on what you wrote, haven't watched the video but plan to later
this year we saw a lot of teams that did well because of the faster pace and more 'puggy'/scrappy skirmish style valorant that ended becoming the meta throughout the entire year. Teams like fnatic, fns's nrg, ange1's navi all rely on a very controlled style of game, where they can manipulate the map throughout a round to get their team an advantage and win rounds, but this year the style of valorant was the exact opposite from this. Util combos and fast hits and retakes became the meta, and instead of trying to manipulate the opponent to leave a site, you would rather bust down the door and destroy it.
This style change negatively affects these slow types of teams because they don't have the aim to work as effectively on retakes and hits, and the benefit that they had for studying the other team intently and sacrificing some of their aim wasn't giving them as much value anymore, because igls like johnqt and munchkin could make gameplans that worked within the meta style that were easier to work with, and also allowed them to play a clutch role and take frags as well. I think the style change is mostly why we saw fnatic do as poorly as they did, with them basically repeating their 2022 team's placements this year at internationals.
This style change is also why I think PRX did badly this year, because instead of them playing fast and using util combos that no one has seen in a slow meta, the entire meta was to play like PRX, and think on the fly, but teams also had that igl factor to push them forward, so what ended up happening was that PRX was essentially playing the same game as every other team, but they had no igl to manipulate rounds with, and the only real benefit they had was that they could outaim their opponents, which didn't even happen sometimes as we saw the rise of the 4 insane shooters on geng in pacific, and drx's rookies + mako and buzz.
Based on what RITO does next year, maybe the game will go back to this slower pace, and we will see teams like PRX and FNC and NRG start to come back, as they can play their slow style, and PRX can start to catch people off guard again, but honestly... I don't see these types of IGLs lasting long unless they're as storied as a Boaster or an FNS. Unless we get something mega slow for all of next year, the aim value that we get from 'fragging igls' is much more valuable than the extra brain that a pure caller/map operator provides.
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