Has anyone noticed this trend in VCT

Teams with controllers who have exceptional mechanics perform considerably better than others.

My reasoning:
Duelists usually have a free getaway card + teams usually set up site executes and aggressive map control takes with a duelist + a minimum of 1 other player to help them.

Controllers are usually playing alone unless you are a brim. Especially on defence where if your mechanics are good enough to be good for 2 kills- that contributes towards how good of an anchor you can be. Especially post-chamber nerf where anchoring has become way more difficult.

So to bring that consistent multikill value for each round + the mental block a strong anchor creates for the opponents is INCREDIBLY valuable.

Some examples like Suygetsu (2022 FPX), Mako (DRX), Marved (Optic), Mindfreak (PRX).

However, there is only one caveat for this which is that 2022 map pools consisted of Bind, Breeze and Icebox which heavily depended on and were dominated by viper players.

suygetsu isnt a smoker but i get your point. Its more anchors instead of smokers. Good anchors are def gamewinners, ie Nats and Dapr 2021. Suygetsu, Mako, Pancada 2022.