If any NA fans remember when Asuna was the main Jett of 100T, you'll remember that team's most glaring issue: the lack of a dedicated awper.
Asuna is a world class rifler, but he isn't as adept with the Operator as his peers, and he was always more suited for movement duelists (like raze) and entrying/creating space, rather than lurking and playing for first bloods.
Ironically enough, the opposite issue is now plaguing 100 Thieves regarding their new, world-renowned awper, Cryo.
Cryo is on the opposite end of the spectrum as Asuna. Rather than a hard entry, he's always been more suited to holding angles and punishing the enemy team, pushing up on defense for picks. However, Mikes has recently been putting him on Raze (despite Asuna being the better choice for that), and his performance on her is, to say the least, subpar.
With that being said, I think having these issues of inflexibility are what prevent most duelists from international performance; it forces their teams to adapt and allocate certain agents to other players to compensate for your lack of an agent pool. Don't get me wrong, Cryo's awping skills are world class, and Asuna's entry skills are as well, but what both are missing is an affinity for each other's specialty.
It's for this reason that the weak link for so many teams is their primary duelist. A few examples include:
DRX - Buzz has the Asuna problem, his awping just isn't up to the same level as his competition.
NRG - Ardiis is an amazing awper, but now that Chamber is out of the meta, FNS can't rely on Victor to fill in the entry role as frequently. In this case, however, I'm hopeful that ardiis with his larger agent pool can become able to play agents like raze at a high level
Giants - Nukkye is good, but he isn't up to the task when his team needs to play slowly and hold angles
PRX - Double duelist is not looking viable for this year, and I doubt PRX can still afford to keep f0rsaken and Jinggg on duelist, taking away a slot for another initiator, or the newly revived sentinel role.
Thus, I have a prediction: despite who may be on top now, the teams that will be on top by the end of the year (and assuming no enormous change in meta), will be those teams that have the one-in-a-million superstar duelists we all already recognize. They are the perfect duelists, known for their frag montages, their insane aim, their lack of fear, and their world-class awping abilities. These players can do it all: they can play raze, they can play neon, they can play jett and they perform well on all of them.
Examples of perfect duelists:
-Aspas
-dgzin
-cNed
-TenZ
-Meteor
-qw1
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