Breaking down the perfect k3soju win at PBE Clash: Dragonlands

Michael “k3soju” Zhang put together a dominant, 100 health, first place finish during the final of PBE Clash: Dragonlands. Considering that’s such a rare feat in a casual game let alone one at such a competitive level, let’s look at how he capitalized on early high rolls through good decision-making to absolutely blow his competition out of the water.

Early Game

K3soju began his game by taking a Mirage emblem as his first augment choice. This alone wasn’t enough to get his streak going, but finding four early game bruisers in Shen, Skarner, Sylas and Illaoi certainly did the trick. Zeke’s Herald also added some early power to his composition.

K3soju’s luck showed in full force on 2-3 when he found a Sy’fen in his shop. Sy’fen is a Whispers/Bruiser/Dragon unit that is very powerful on the current PBE patch. At Level 5, k3soju only had a 2% chance of finding a 4-cost unit in his shop, let alone one of the best units in the game.

Mid Game

Although k3soju didn’t have especially powerful items or augments through the early game, his units, and especially his Sy’fen, propelled him through win after win. He continued to aggressively purchase XP for levels while slamming as many items as possible to keep up his tempo.

The pivotal, game-defining decision came during the mid game when k3soju was presented with his options for his second augment. He made the decision to use his one augment re-roll and chose to take Ancient Archives I. A little bit of luck gave him a Whispers emblem in his Tome of Traits.

The Whispers emblem can be incredibly powerful as k3soju demonstrated in his late game build.

Late Game

While k3soju used the Whispers emblem on a Yone 2 for most of his mid game, his biggest power spike came on 4-2 when he chose his third and final augment. He got Dragon Alliance, which allows the Dragon trait to stay active even when you have multiple Dragon units on your board. You also gain a random Tier 4 Dragon.

Not only did k3soju receive a Sy’fen as his random dragon, he also found a Daeja in his very next shop. He immediately put Daeja into his composition and gave her the Whispers emblem. Whispers Daeja is incredibly powerful because Daeja scales well off both Ability Power and Attack Damage.

K3soju’s final board relied heavily on the damage from Daeja and the front line of Sy’fen. He swapped out some of his Whispers units for Mystics and Evokers, including a crucial Bard 2. His win was so dominant that k3soju didn’t even have time to roll all his gold at Level 9 and find a 3-star Daeja. Even still, k3soju can certainly be happy with the 8 points he gets for a first place finish in PBE Clash: Dragonlands.