getting a bye to playoffs

might be a 'bad' thing for the first seeds
obviously going to playoffs for free is great but i think that having been on the stage already, and getting used to the pressure of the moment is a big big advantage for the swiss teams
like in shanghai 3 of the first seeds lost upper QFs

depends... now its a huge buff cuz of tejo nerf, map changes n the time to study the new stuff they showed in groups

Naah man like if u won ur regional in front of a crowd then it won't matter much, that bye gets u one week extra time, no reveal of ur new strats while simultaneously allowing u to anti strat ur opponent

might be a bad thing for deeper runs
but at least you're always guaranteed more money/top 8 than just getting grouped

It's bad for teams like RRQ who are inexperienced. But it's good for teams like fnatic and g2 who are already accustomed.

last year shanghai top 3 had no first seeds

I honestly don't think it's the same for this year, just with how the teams have played. Going into Shanghai - G2, Gen.G, and Heretics were better teams than 100T, Paper Rex, and Fnatic. Fnatic has been a better team than Heretics this year, G2 has been better than Sen, and Rarga has been better than BiliBili.

Tl;dr - last years first seeds were more finals flukes than teams better over the split.

Note 2 - 100T doing anything well is a fluke and all of yall damn well know that.

It's a good question, I'm curious to see if it will happen again

swiss/group stage teams are warmed up and played few matches. #1 seeds might get complacent and will probably need a game to two to get warmed up