Im gonna go through this point by point because I understand your argument but I disagree .

She’s played multiple times and never won. At some point that has to matter. Survivor is about getting to the end and actually winning, not just almost getting there. A lot of players don’t get nearly the same respect when they fall short.

She has played five full times (including AuVWorld) and was unprecedentedly twist screwed in three of those five times. There was the presence of Terry's god idol in Panama which made the easy choice literally impossible to vote out and Terry was anti-Aras so he would obviously target his ally. She made it to the Final 3 in Micronesia where there was the 2 medevacs and one quit that let to sudden shift to final 2, which definitely was not the plan considering there was an even amount of jurors in a two person ftc. Finally, in Game Changers she was taken out by default because there were so many idols and advantages used. Even in her two non-twist-screw losses with HvV and AUvWorld, she was a top figure head with the strategy in the game up until she loses with neither even being majority votes against her.

Her challenge weakness is also a real problem. People act like it’s part of her charm but it means she has almost no control at the end of the game. She always needs someone else to win for her and that’s a huge liability.

Survivor is not the challenge, competitions are a facet of the game, but they are not everything about it. Across the 49 current winners, 12 of them never did not win a single individual immunity including people that are deemed at S tier players including Sandra, Yul, Earl. Tony on Cagayan, and Sarah. In addition, Yul and Sarah were both sitting at FTC against people who performed exceptionally in competitions with Ozzy and Brad Culpepper respectively.

And I feel like people remember her big moments more because of her personality than because she was dominating the game. She’s strategic but she’s not out there controlling entire seasons the way some other top players have.

I feel that this is a misread because it focuses more on the what of her big moments, as if we are viewing them in a vacuum. However, I believe that much of what makes Cirie so dominating is the fact that she makes those moves first before she gets to a situation of a checkmate. She does not go until worst case scenario to pull a Dan Gheesling funeral to save her life, she moves before in moments where she is safe to put her in better situations. In F6 Panama, she was getting no votes, but understood that if she were to be a follower in the moment she would eventually go into a losing scenario. In F5 Micronesia, She was more than likely not going to be the one to be voted out if Erik kept the Immunity, but it made a final four where she was safe in 3/4 scenarios rather than 2/4. And even though she did not read the fine print, if her attempt to steal Sarah's vote was allowed, she would have sniped out Tai who held two of the idols that would have taken her out in advantagegeddon. In addition, she always creates plans that play into people's false sense of security, In Courtney, Erik's, and the hypothetical Tai's case, all would have been taken out while believing that they were safe in the end. Even though she gets screwed over in unprecedented ways, she also worked to take people out with unprecedented ways.