The first prerequisite for consistently finishing top 25 used to be smart dice moves.

Anyone can learn the basic fundamentals of dice moves; such as trying for a cut, protecting your base, stacking effectively before attacking.

But there are lots of less obvious ways to improve your chance of winning with good dice rolls; such as risking an early 4v5 attack that will probably fail and drop you from 5th to 6th, but making it will get you a good chance at first. There are countless ways to evaluate the risks of making the right move.

For some players these moves are intuitive. Things like moving an 8 stack three territories to try for a lucky build and cut, rather than just stacking and hoping you win a bunch of 8v8s versus a stronger opponent.

Anyway, there used to be a lot of players who made the right moves. Their other skill sets such as loyalty and competitiveness and PGAs and IMs and socail networking and table image might have been different, but the most important factor in finishing top 25 was good dice skills.

Now the most important factor in finishing the top 25 is social networking, trustworthiness, PGA (whatever you want to call it).