Heroic and FaZe Clan, the current No. 2 and 3 CS:GO teams in the world at the moment according to HLTV’s ranking, will face one another in the first quarterfinal series of BLAST Paris Major playoffs on May 18 at the Accor Arena.
This has led some casual CS:GO fans to confusion as they expected such teams would only face each other later on, but the matchup has been scheduled for the quarterfinals because of their Legends Stage seeding. Heroic have the first seeding coming to Champions Stage due to their 3-0 campaign, while FaZe only booked their spot on May 16 after defeating NAVI in the elimination game.
After Heroic and FaZe play their match, the loser will be sent home as the playoffs feature a single-elimination bracket structure and the winner will progress to the semifinals on Saturday, May 20, and play against the survivor of Monte vs. GamerLegion. The other side of the bracket has Liquid vs. Apeks and home-favorites Vitality vs. the U.K.’s Into the Breach.
With the way that the playoff bracket has been drawn based on the seedings, there is a chance CS:GO fans will watch more tier-two teams in the semifinals than tier-one teams. For this to happen, Apeks must beat Liquid and Into the Breach must take down Vitality. This way we’d have three tier-two teams in the semifinals because GamerLegion or Monte will make it too.
Also, if Apeks and Into the Breach win their quarterfinal matches, at least one tier-two team will make the grand finals of BLAST Paris Major, which would be the perfect representation of what we saw in this Major circuit since the European qualifier in April.
Related: ZywOo explains why so many underdogs are doing well at BLAST Paris CS:GO Major
The BLAST Paris Major will take a short hiatus on May 17 and resume on May 18 with the first two quarterfinals: Heroic vs. FaZe at 8am CT and Vitality vs. Into the Breach at 12pm CT.
