Secondary skills in Heroes 3.

I disagree about luck. It's a very useful thing at any stage of the game. And what about Keen Eye? You learn a couple of spells from your opponent, and that's it... the rest of the time, it's just dead weight. Well, and learning can help you develop faster.

Much depends on the nature of the game and your teammates. I think when someone makes a categorical statement, it's probably because they haven't played under different conditions, haven't simply tried playing in a new way, etc.
Heroes is a very rich game, capable of offering different options for entertainment and competition. It would be great if organizers appeared who would use this richness, rather than stripping the game down (which often happens in tournaments - but this is just my opinion). TE is also not a very good example in this regard - people are creating a stripped-down version of the game, or rather, a stripped-down version of the process as a whole.
But this dilemma has been around for decades - martial arts also split into "real" and sports at one time, and the same goes for chess - either it is primarily developed as an art-science, or as a sport.