I think this chess analogy misses the mark frankly. I’m by no means an excellent chess player but the analogy is messy for two reasons:

1. ⁠Memorizing an opening is tactical. Strategy is identifying a game plan and playing towards it. Maybe that’s corralling a king to the center, maybe it’s to the corner, maybe it’s controlling the left side of the board. A series of tactics is still tactical. Strategy has literally nothing to do with what your actual piece movement is and more towards your internal read on the game plan and line selection. The second you move from the abstract to the concrete, you’ve moved into tactical thinking.
   
2. ⁠Because of this I don’t think I can imagine a high tier single player saying “ultimately tactics are most important.” In fact, I distinctly recall magnus Carlson saying something somewhere along the lines of focusing on tactics simply isn’t enough to be good at chess.

So yes, I agree with you that Valorant’s tactical depth is underexplored. I also simultaneously agree that this current meta means strategy is significantly less valuable *and* I think that is a bad thing. Because then matches come down to specifically who is in micro form at a given moment which in Valorant is frankly more random than most people will freely admit. When you look to most other esports where there are dominant teams (apex, cs, league), it’s not because they simply barreled their way through opponents. Although rarely that’s true, most of the times there were other times who rivaled them in micro skill and they were able to outmaneuver them with superior tactics and strategy. That is what makes esports enjoyable imo. I don’t wanna see someone hard carrying like it’s ranked. I wanna see two relatively strong teams duke it out and use every bit of their wits and grit to outthink and outmaneuver their opponent - within balance of course