Thoughts on Zyra's design from an experienced player

Hello everyone,

I know there are some changes coming to Zyra and thought it would be cool to highlight the good and bad of Zyra's design. I don't usually post here so I'll try to keep it short. This is just my opinion of playing the game for almost 10 years and trying to apply my understanding of game design. Feel free to express your opinion!

The Good of Zyra's Design: _1. Theme 2. Clear strengths and weaknesses 3. Good balance between high and low moments _

1. Zyra's theme is very good in my opinion. The lore and gameplay combine really well to make the player feel as if they were a queen of plants/thorns. The visual expression of the character is clear and matches expectation.

2. For gameplay, Zyra has very clear strengths and weaknesses that any player can pick up on, whether it's their first time playing her or one-hundredth time playing her. One general weakness is her being squishy and immobile. One mechanical weakness is avoiding her root so the opponent can burst her out, if Zyra misses her root, she is vulnerable to her opponent's gap closing or damaging ability. Besides being squishy, immobile, and mechanical misplay, players generally understand to play around the plants to expose her weakness. Some strengths of her, is being able to lock-down an entire team and have good damage. Her strength is reliant on both her opponent and the skill of the Zyra player. I believe this is good design because it gives both, the Zyra player, and the opponent agency on the outcome of the fight. One example is, a pro Zyra can turn the fight by proper placement of her ultimate, while the opponent has the option to position themselves away from their team to avoid getting clustered cc'd; making Zyra choose which area to ult is key in winning the team fight. I believe this type of fighting pattern is healthy in a PvP game.

3. The high moments for the Zyra player is always memorable. Getting two players rooted into a 5-man knock up when they're all taking hits from the empowered plants is a very rewarding experience for the Zyra player. The low moments, like the high moments, are also memorable. Missing your root on a champion that is running at you can cost you one point in the middle of your score sheet (x/1/x). I think these types of low moment are good because players have control of these low moments (better positioning, more accurate skill-shots), rather than having no control (RNG).

The Bad of Zyra's Design: 1. RNG Plants 2. Weak counterplay in one aspect of the match (laning phase) 3. Clarity with spells and plant damage

1. RNG can be fun if done correctly, but isn't necessary to have fun. Garden of Thorns (Passive) is a very unrewarding passive. Whether a seed grows into the correct position or not, it never feels like the Zyra player had any input of how that seed spawned, other than counting seconds on the passive and standing in the proximity of a potential fighting spot. Ultimately, the Zyra player never appreciates or credits the passive for being able to spawn the correct seed in the correct location.

2. I'll admit, laning against Zyra is hardly interactive and unfun. To be fair though, playing against any other poke mage (Karma, Brand, Lulu) is also unfun. So while this might be a systematic problem rather than a specific Zyra problem, it's still not fun to play against. For Zyra specifically, the real counterplay is to fight the plants into a minion wave. Having a distraction is key to avoiding plant damage, but also puts you vulnerable to your opponent's abilities and auto-attacks, which gives Zyra almost full control of the lane and dictates how her opponent can play the game.

3. This is more of a minor problem, but differentiating her spell damage from her plant damage is hard to notice. When a full team fight is going on, more often you're spawning plants and also hitting them with your spells, which makes clarity the cost for this. For a casual player, I don't think it matters too much, if they can just roll their face on the keyboard to achieve the kill, I think they'll be happy. For a more strategic player, knowing you spawned the correct plant at the crucial moment is probably more rewarding for them. Of course, there is the situation of chasing kills and using the spell with the most range to achieve the kill without spawning a plant. Sure, they'll appreciate the single ability then. Once again, this is just a minor problem of her design.

Closing Thoughts: I know this some of these points seemed obvious, but still wanted to throw it out there. I was going to write solutions to the problems of her design, but decided to keep it simple for now. Depending on the responses, I'll consider making another post about solutions to these issues or other issues players bring up.

Have a good day, Russ