Here's what I like about Zyra and what I don't, with a proposed rework as well

What I like about Zyra:

1. Flexible pick, can mid, support, even works as a decent anti-melee top laner.

2. Quite a bit of CC. Makes sense with her plant theme.

3. Choice between long range plant and short range plant with a slow.

4. How her plants are spawned. Way cooler than Heimer just planting his minions or Malz just spawning his.

5. Her ult. Despite many people complaining about the delayed damage and then the delayed cc, this ult is fantastic.

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Here's what I think needs changes:

1. The passive. I've stood up for this passive for the longest time, saying how good it is with your built in cc, saying how easy it is to pick up kills with, saying how it can even clear waves after death, but it's time for a new one. I still think the passive is really good, I just think it's extremely clunky and feels bad to use.

2. Frontloading all of her damage onto two spells.

3. Frontloading all of her mana costs onto two spells.

4. Free stats to justify a weak spell. It's just lame, and the amount is almost completely useless. 10% at level 18. That means for the majority of the game I can't have full cdr because I'd be wasting the free stats I get.

5. Plants are great, but only having two at a time (most of the time) and having them deal a shit ton of damage isn't super exciting. I'd rather have a ton of plants that do a small amount of damage than one or two doing a lot.

6. Lack of poison anywhere in a champion whose theme is plant woman.

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Here's my proposed rework:

Passive: Rampant growth: Every fourth spell cast you spawn a plant. The plant you spawn is decided by which spell you cast as your fourth. Multiple plants attacking the same target deal significantly less damage.

Moving her W to her passive gets rid of the old one and opens her W up for another damaging move, which means you can spread the damage between Q, E, and plants out so you're not destroying someone with just a QE combo. This also allows her to have three different plants instead of just two.

Q: Deadly Bloom: After a short delay, Zyra spawns thorns at target location. If this spell would trigger Rampant Growth, a plant grows for every enemy champion hit, capping at four plants. In addition, a plant will appear in the center of Deadly Blooms aoe regardless if a champion is hit or not.

This spell is essentially the same, but with a lower cooldown, lower mana cost, and lower damage. The goal here is to do less damage with the Q, but be able to use it more to get more plants out. The plant spawn is also the same, but lower the damage. Numbers can always be changed but I was thinking cooldown it would change from 7-5 seconds with a drop of .5 seconds per level to 7-3 seconds with a drop of 1 second per level. For the damage drop I was thinking the base drops from 70-210 with an increase of 35 per level to 60-200 with an increase of 35 per level, then decrease the AP ratio from 65% to 45%.

For the plant spawn, I was thinking of lowering the base damage from 23 + 6.5 per level + 20% AP to 20 + 5 per level + 15% AP.

W: Venomous Barbs: Zyra lashes with vines in target direction, dealing initial damage and applying a poison that slows, cripples, and amplifies damage taken by plants to the first target hit. Each plant auto increases the cripple duration by .25 seconds. If Zyra uses Venomous Barbs to spawn a plant, it spawns a medium range poisonous plant that applies the slow, cripple, and damage amp with its autos. (Note: Every plant can increase the cripple duration of the initial target, but only the poison plant spawned by W can apply the poison to new targets.)

For numbers I was thinking 75/100/125/150/175 + 40% AP with a stagnant 10 second cooldown. The duration of the poison would be 1 second, with each attack from the plant adding .5 seconds to already poisoned targets. Plant range is 600 (between the 750 of Q plants and the 450 of the E plants), damage is the same as Q plant. For reference, a Cripple is a unique crowd control effect that stops the victim from using any gap closers.

A completely new spell with a completely new CC accomplishing many goals. 1. It splits Zyra's power from two spells to three, so all of her damage isn't frontloaded into her QE. 2. It gives her a unique CC that also deals with the complaints of E and R being hard to hit. 3. A new unique plant. 4. A poison move on our lady plant! 5. Gives her a way to deal with mobile champions, particularly assassins. Credit for this wonderful idea goes to LankPants

E: Grasping Roots: Same spell visually but with less scaling damage and a lower mana cost. Would also like to give it a scaling cooldown starting at 14 and going to 10 with a 1 second per level difference instead of its current static cooldown of 12 to make up for the lost passive cdr. Plants spawned will also be the same, except the damage is lowered and a plant spawns for each enemy champion hit when Zyra uses this as her Rampant Growth attack, or spawns one at the last minion hit if only minions are hit.

Damage lowered to the same as Q.

R: Stranglethorns: Again, I love this ability so I'm not going to change much. Just normalize that mana cost to 100 from the 100/120/140 that it is now, then lower the base to 175/250/325 from 180/265/350, lower the ratio from 70% to 60%, and lower the cooldown from 130/120/110 to 120/110/100.

The reason I'm nerfing the damage on the ult is because I'd like it to be less about burst and more about amping your army of plants. With my proposed changes you're gaining a lot more potential plants. It goes from most likely having two to maybe three or four if you're prepping for a tower dive or baron/dragon to having up to three just from hitting all three parts of W, up to five if you land a 5 man E, and Q is on a lower cooldown so you can use that to charge up the passive relatively quickly. I'm also giving it a lower cooldown to make up for the loss of the passive cdr.

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So there you have it. My proposed rework keeps her largely the same, but with more opportunities for plants, more overall damage, but with less damage on each spell. It really focuses on the uniqueness of her plants, which is increased even more with the addition of the new W plant.

EDITS: I've changed Q to automatically spawn one plant if used with the passive, and then an additional plant for each champion hit capping out at four plants total if you hit three champions. A wonderful suggestion from Lankpants, I've completely changed my original W idea into a combination of his idea and my own.