My ticket out of bronze - Zyra

Hello League community. I just finished my promos to get out of bronze and my eyes are on gold. But before that I wanna share some tips how I went out of bronze, playing almost exclusively Zyra.

First things first - why Zyra?

Zyra is a control mage, played almost always as a support. She combines strong early game, burst, CC, reliable engage and disengage. She is the original "carry support". And if we want to win games - we need to carry them. Queuing as a support means you will almost always get your role and can focus on it. While she is not an easy champion she is not THAT hard to play, and actually playing versus a good Zyra is much harder than playing her yourself. If you want to win with her, however, it is a good idea to practice her in a few dozens normal games. Once you start consistently getting A-s and above you are ready to go.

But how do I play Zyra First and most important - laning phase. We excel here. Let me tell you what I do during the laning phase. Remember - I just went out of bronze. There will probably b a lot of higher elo and more skilled players than me, who can correct some of the mistakes I make. Sure you must listen to them as well, but this is what I do, and so far it works well.

Skill order. You almost always want to start with your Q, then W, then max E into Q and finally W. Put a point at your R whenever you can.

Runes and masteries. http://champion.gg/champion/Zyra Try to follow the "highest winrate" ones. They work just fine.

Build. It usually looks like this: Zyra has really high base numbers and pretty poor AP scaling. So you want as much penetration as you want so base numbers hurt more, as well as CDR, so you can use your base numbers more often

Before the game start. are my sums of choice. Start with and . Sometimes pots are better, but IMO refillable is more efficient.

More often than not you want to drop a ward in the enemy bull spawn pit (blue or red, depending on which side of the map you are). That is a bit dangerous, because you can be caught off-guard by the enemy team and give a fast first blood. If your AD or jungler is coming with you - you can do it. Do not over-commit to fights there. All you want is a ward so you know ehere enemy jungler starts. You do not want to fight yet. Next you head to your buff spawn. You want to place a few flowers there, so they can tank some of the damage for your jungler. If he starts at the topside - call him, telling him that flowers can tank for him. For most jungers that would be beneficial. To spawn flowers in the pit you want to stay somewhere close to the center of the pit, closer to it's exit. When the camp spawns you hit it with a Q, trying to spawn as many flowers as possible. Your job here is done. Go to lane so you do not miss experience from minions.

Levels 1-2. You want to poke here. Remember - your flowers will hit enemy laner if your Q does. Ideally you want to hit both of the AD or the support and a seed, so the flower hits them as well. Do not over-commit as well. Simple Q-W or Q on a passive spawned seed will do the job for you. Low elo ADC or supports rarely can position themselves in a way, that they can avoid that. It brings them to low HP and gives you money. Do not overdo it. You are (kinda) mana hungry, and without mana you are useless. Figure out during some normal games, so you will have a feeling when you can hit the enemies and not waste too much mana. Use your AA a lot. Zyra has a long range AA and a nice animation. Early game auto attacks do more than you think. The ideal moment is when enemy AD attacks a minion - that mean they cannot fight back. Again - practice will make the difference. Sometimes in the beginning that would cause you get caught, but with some practice you will figure out when is the right moment to AA enemy AD or support.

Care for enemy engage tools - blitz or thresh hooks, Morgana binds, etc. Remember - you are squishy and even low-elo folks can easily punish over-aggression.

level 3-5. So, here it starts interesting. Ideally your QW at low levels had brought enemies to lower HP than you. Now you really start to hurt. E Q W W is enough to take 30-40% of an enemy HP. Again - do not overcommit here. Ideally if you poke down enemies you can go for a kill with ignite and that's what you want. However do not go ball-in if you just and EQWW on a full HP enemy. The poke from spells themselves is very good, and probably the second or third time you land an E you can take the kill easily and more important - safely. Usually I run out of mana at some place here, so I base Do not overstay at low HP and mana. You need mana to do damage. I go for a and as my rush items, as long as I can afford them. Do not forget as well. They help a lot. An extra is a great buys as it is cheap and offers extra mana sustain, and as we Said - we are both mana hungry and useless without mana.

Pro tip - ward as much as possible. Even if your teammates do not watch the map - you can. As you do not CS you have plenty of time to watch the map and see ganks coming.

Levels 6 and on. So, here we are. Now we can one-shot enemies. At this stage an E on the enemy carry means you can simply cast all of your spell on him and kill him 100-0. Your goal here is to take enemy tier one turret ASAP, so you can get the tower first blood gold. Do not hesitate to share it with your carry. Remember - you are Zyra, you are the hidden carry.

When you get it you almost always want to roam mid and maybe top. Having your ultimate means you have kill potential on everyone, especially if your jungler helps you ganking. Again - watch the map to see where you can roam. Keep warding. With the help of the jungler you can take drake. Again - place your flowers behind the drake, so it turns to them and do not damage your jungler. If enemies have steal potential - a good idea is to save your E and a seed in W. It won't boost your DPS over drake a lot, but can help stopping enemy jungler from taking it. Also you can go for steals, if you are ballsy enough. With EWWQR in the pit you can both steal drake and get some nice kills for yourself and the cary. Try to land it on as much people as possible. Do not do that if your jungler, mid or AD are not around.

Pro tip - if you spot enemy jungler topside - go and ward their jungle. later you and your jungler can invade and kill him. Who says you only gank laners?

Our goal here is to take all tier one turrets and mid tier two. If you have a good teamfight ping turrets as much as possible. I have had some ridiculous pushes like - 4 of the enemies die, then we push mid and take 3 turrets and inhib at about 20-22 minutes before they respawn. However it is situational. Use your tab key and watch the map as much as possible. Keep jungle around the midlane warded as much as you can. Try to force objectives - mostly turrets and inhibs. Also Nahsor, as the strategy is similar to drake one. This is what win games.

Also defending your turrets is essential. With your waveclear you can take a lot of farm on side lanes, which your laners ignore, Do not hesitate to go wan clear pushing waves, but do not overextend. The minion gold and experience will help you a lot to get more levels and items, and we need that to carry. Do not take it away from your laners though. Take it when they ignore them and enemy team does now knock on your other turrets. While you can probably 1v1 a lot of people at this stage you are still squishy and can die if caught pretty fast.

Team fights. So, this is one of the main reason we use Zyra. Low elo folks rarely care enough for objectives, so it is teamfight what wins the games. You want to stay behind and wait for your or enemy team to engage. Sure, you can throw E sometimes, hoping for pick, but be careful. That would make you pretty vulnerable to assassins. Aside from that - you want to place your AOE on as many people as possible - the best moment is if the enemy team engages onto yours. Just position yourself carefully, behind your tanks. Keep areas around you warded, so you can see enemy flanks earlier. As long as you are alive with your team and you place some big E and R - you will probably win that fight.

So, that's for my guide. I know that it might not be the best one out there, but as long as you wish - you can give it a try. A lot of things here are obvious, however paying attention on them helps a lot. Hope it would be useful, at least to some extent. Best of luck and see you again soon (hopefully) with my ticker out of silver!