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Let's talk about Zyra's changes

Excubitors·5/13/2016, 12:45:09 AM·2 votes·713 views

As a former Zyra main who hovered around mid plat for most of last season, I felt like Zyra had a pretty solid identity, even though she was mostly overlooked as a mid laner. A well executed combo felt intentional and well thought-out, and her ability to stay at arm's length with a well placed snare somewhat made up for her squishy nougat center. Of course, there were some bugs, like the world's derpiest plants who would decide to stop attacking the enemy champion at random, and her passive, which always seemed like a bit of an afterthought.

I liked the idea of Rampant Growth as a new passive. It felt like something that would fit Zyra thematically, and help give a sense of having her plants slowly encroaching on an enemy. However, after playing a few games, something just feels off.

Rampant Growth is just too random. The fun part about Zyra was the strategic element - she couldn't just overpower you, the player had to choose their engages and their poke wisely, and avoid overextending for an automatic death by gank. Zyra's new passive seems to take away that element, and randomizes her power to the point where it weakens that core part of her identity. The cost of shifting more power into her passive hurts her tremendously as well. The E-W combo lost some of its distance, which cuts heavily into her ability to stay out of harm's way going into an engagement. In addition, the new radius for the Q just feels wrong. It fires horizontally while E fires vertically - lining up champions for a fantastic E means you're going to miss most of them with a well-placed Q, unless you can hurry off to the side and try to get it off quickly. But that obviates Zyra's identity as someone who needs to keep her enemies entangled at arm's length. She seems to need to be closer to the front to take full advantage of her combos now, and that drastically reduces her effectiveness in team fights.

Would love to get some other Zyra players' thoughts on this. I hope Riot doesn't intend to just let Zyra languish without any attention after her rework - I feel like she still needs some adjustments to really emphasize some of the core elements of her identity.

5 Comments

Amelie5/13/2016, 3:02:09 PM2 votes

You might be interested in some responses in my Zyra thread from a couple days ago.

I have to admit I didn't notice or realize her EW was nerfed at all. I have no troubles kiting and/or staying out of reach with her, especially with her movespeed back to normal. Her typical Rylai/Liandry's build also means she is kiting easily. I've seen people also build RoA on her, so she's actually rather tanky and has no problem getting into the thick of things.

The Q doesn't bother me at all, but that may be because I played Malzahar enough that it feels fairly natural. I also don't exactly care to hit champions with Q directly since most of her damage is coming from plants.

Privileged Jew5/13/2016, 12:58:53 AM1 votes

Former Zyra main myself. I was afraid of this even before Riot had announced its changes to Zyra on the PBE. They always seem to break mages when they attempt to rework them. They're either OP and are eventually gutted, or became even less powerful than before. In this case, the latter happened. No more carrying people with Zyra support now that the plants' damage has been reduced and I can no longer QW harass for major damage due to Q's damage and single target radius being nerfed to hell.

Who the hell thought that making Zyra continent on being immobile in this mobility meta was a good idea? I liked playing her aggressively but I guess I'll have to find another mage support to do that. Annie looks pretty good. Could never replace the old Zyra though.

Nursing5/13/2016, 1:32:09 AM1 votes

I'll always play Zyra, but I have to agree the preworked version of her is definitely better. The new Q is awkward and almost feels like it does no damage at all... I can't tell you how useful it was to harass with it in lane or even finish someone off with it when they have just a tiny chunk of health left. On the topic of the passive, I personally liked the old one. She was the squishiest and the slowest champion, so it was quite likely she'd die in a teamfight at some point if anyone hopped on her and it was able to give her one last shot in a team fight. I do think she's still a great champion, but it almost seems like she relies too much on her plants now. Yeah, the old version still relied on them but her basic abilities by themselves also did damage and she had a chance at poking when she didn't have seeds available.

Chortle5/13/2016, 2:19:13 PM1 votes

The distance nerf on E-W is SEVERLY noticeable.