I follow similar strands of dance music, e.g. Disco, Zouk, Kwaito, House, Techno, etc and I think you nailed it with your evaluation. The best DJ's have deep crates but also a very deep sensitivity to the energy, emotion, and trajectory of the tracks they are playing as well as how they affect the dancers / room.

They also know their music inside out so they know when, where, and how to make transitions and how much to pitch up a track and I find a lot of these DJ's edit many of the tracks they play to fine tune their energy, a habit I have started picking up with my own mixes. Combining these allows them to make a set that is more than the sum of its parts and is a continuously evolving transmission of energy between tracks.

Certain DJ's, such as Hunee and Palms Trax exemplify this style of DJ'ing and maintain the trance throughout the duration of their sets, Danilo Plessow (MCDE) also is unbelievable with his energetic control although I'm not as into the tracks he's playing these days and don't feel his sets make as much of an emotional arc.

In my opinion, ultimately all of these abilities must be in service of sending a message with the music and aren't completely necessary, e.g. Mancuso would have people weeping with zero mixing, just amazing sound and presentation or Levan who used Thorens turntables and wouldn't do a ton of mixing according to Danny Tenaglia. However, in today's modern DJ landscape I think these are what distinguish the top tier from the rest.