Who has been the best in BLAST tournaments in 2023?

It's been a crazy year for BLAST.

We've put on a Major for the first time in our existence, and for that reason 2023 will always be special for us.

We'd like to celebrate the best players and teams from every event we've put on so far this year, because we're in a celebratory mood.

BLAST Premier Spring Groups

FaZe, Vitality and G2 came out in the 1st to 3rd bracket, but you'd be hard pressed to look past the former two as the best team at the event.

FaZe's 63.3% round win share as well as the best 5v4% (80.5%) and 4v5% (45.1%) make them a stand out candidate, but Vitality's 60.2% opening kill percentage and just shy of 0.9 multikills per round made them the kings of firepower.

That firepower was largely the work of ZywOo and Spinx - the former was the second highest rated player at the event at 1.42, with Spinx in fourth with 1.32. Spinx came in third in terms of success rate in opening duels (with a much larger share of his team's attempts than the two above him, broky and jks), while ZywOo also broke the top 10.

Stephanie Lindgren

The only player higher than ZywOo was NiKo, who dropped a 1.48 rating, 97.5 ADR and a 1.63 K/D ratio. Decent.

Interestingly, nobody picked up more AWP kills per round than broky, despite his somewhat quieter performance, while s1mple collected 10 clutches, the most at the event.

Paris Major Challengers Stage

G2 stood out as clearly the best team at this stage, with a ludicrous 65.3% round win share, just under 50% 4v5% (47.6) win percentage, and over 45 utility damage per round.

This was in large parts down to m0NESY, who at 1.49, was 0.11 rated higher than second place at the event - another G2 player, jks. Perhaps more interestingly, the four highest T side rated players at this stage were all G2 players, with only HooXi missing out.

m0NESY, for what it's worth, dropped a 1.72 T side rating.

Stephanie Lindgren

He took more than his fair share of opening duels (29.6%) and won 72.4% of them, which makes the game a hell of a lot easier. Somehow, degster ended up with slightly more AWP kills per round than he did (0.57-0.55), and an even better opening duel success rate (80%), albeit with fewer attempts.

The impressive jks died less than once every two rounds (0.49 deaths per round) and shared top of the headshots per round leaderboard with BOROS, who was something of a breakout star.

Paris Major

Team Vitality rose above to win the whoe thing, and boasted the best multikill rate at the event (0.9 per round) as well as, unsurprisingly, the best round win percentage (57.8%) and opening kill percentage (56.2%). Runners-up GamerLegion actually dipped below 50% on opening kill share, but had the best 4v5% (36.1%) as well as the second best multikill rate (0.86).

It's no surprise, in that sense, that the two best players of the event were on these teams. ZywOo ended as the highest rated with a 1.39, with iM close behind on 1.35. Both took over 20% of their team's opening duels (ZywOo 24.2%, iM 28.4%) with ZywOo winning a higher share (65.7% to 56.3%), which can likely be put down to the AWP.

Michal Konkol

BOROS, who was mentioned above, took a mind-bending 36.6% of his team's opening duels, and still won over half (54.7%), which is an incredible feat. Only two other players broke 30% attempts and both k0nfig and CYPHER were well below 50%. Even arT only managed 29.8% attempts.

The closest player to him who also won over half of their duels, was iM.

Apeks' dream run was powered by great teamplay, but helped by a monster clutching performance from nawwk, who won 11 clutches en route to the semi-finals. Only acoR came close to him, with 8, with no-one else breaking 6.

It was a relatively quiet AWP tournament, surprisingly - the most AWP kills per round of any player was gxx- with 0.43.

BLAST Premier Spring Final

Heroic took top prize in Washington DC, and it's testament to their excellent gameplan and teamwork that they won without a single player in the top five rated.

This was powered by a fantastic 4v5% (40.8%), terrific utility damage (28.7 per round) and flash assists (0.27 per round, shared with Vitality).

NiKo topped the charts rating wise, with 1.28, with blameF narrowly behind on 1.27. Unsurprisingly, both put up excellent numbers in opening duels too, with NiKo taking 29.3% of his team's opening duels and winning 57.1%, while blameF took 21.1% but won a superb 64.3% of them.

sh1ro took top spot in terms of AWP kills per round, though the total number of AWP kills went in favour of FalleN. m0NESY won 76.7% of his opening duels, which is crazy, while Ax1Le did more damage per round than anyone else (91.1).

BLAST Premier Fall Groups

FaZe, Heroic and NIP qualified as the top three teams, despite Vitality boasting the highest K/D and the best round win % (64.7%). Vitality's 85.1% 5v4 and 41.6% 4v5 rate are not only the best at the event, but some of the best you'll see in any event.

ZywOo, blameF and NiKo once more found themselves as the top 3 rated, with 1.37, 1.33 and 1.30 ratings respectively.

Stephanie Lindgren

blameF's ridiculous 77.6% success in opening duels made him a menace (with the often unfairly maligned junior coming in third, with 73.5%), while NiKo once more took a huge share and won over half of his duels.

stavn actually ended the event with the highest ADR (92.9), while NiKo was not only in a huge amount of opening duels, but also won the most clutches (8).

device topped the charts for AWP kills per round with 0.50 (with junior in second, 0.42), while blameF was the sole rifler in the top five for deaths per round.