^^^ Pretty much. #2 comes from your work ethic. Be smart about the others and don't be too trusting that #2 will get you through.
My year group was several years ahead of that FY13-15 train wreck that the OP noted. Not foreseeing those boards myself, I gave a lot of JO aviators simple advice that was based mostly on #2—work hard and the reward would come—up until about 2011-2012. As those promotion rates started to nosedive, I switched my advice and my audience to telling the front office that they needed to think of their fitrep rack and stack as picking who would
not get promoted (training squadron < FRS, therefore no competitive EP = no promote). I gave both types of advice in good faith- I was wrong on the first kind (hindsight sucks) but I was right on the second (right as in I hate it when I'm right).
@Tycho_Brohe , yes the "BUPERS math" seems annoying when you first see it but it's legitimate. It's based on a five year average of the odds of getting promoted,
not necessarily the odds of getting promoted on your first look, and it comes from something called DOPMA that applies to all federal employees.