@Riot: Talk About Zyra

For as front-and-center as she is in this mage update, you aren't talking about her. Search for "Zyra" with comments from Riot:

0 results in past 24 hours. 2 results in past week, a bug and a comment about Karma 3 results in past 30 days, all bugs or skins and a comment about Karma

Part of adding "identity" to mages has been shifting power towards minions, like with Zyra, Malz, and Annie. Zyra players in particular have been trying to get Riot to engage in conversation about the plant AI for at least a year without much success.

The closest we got to an actual answer were these two comments from Meddler: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/EjtVw5RB-meddler-what-exactly-did-the-zyra-ai-tweaks-touch-up-on?comment=0000

Zyra's plant logic will not be that much different. Here's the actual logic for those curious:

1. Units that have taunted the plant (e.g., Shen), whatever their range.. they will just stare at an out of range unit while taunted

2. Champs Zyra has auto-attacked in the last 3 seconds (prioritizing most recently attacked)
3. Champs that have recently been attacked by any plant (prioritizing nearest)
4. Champs within 350 units of the plant -- for reference, 350 is the size of Lee Sin's E1 or Evelynn's R (prioritizing closest)
5. Non-champs Zyra has AA'd (prioritizing most recently attacked)
6. Any unit in range (prioritizing closest)

The changes in 5.18 are that: 2 and 5 now use "most recent" over "closest", allowing Zyra to better re-direct plants to higher priority targets; Plants will no longer get hung up on invisible targets, such as champions in fog of war; Plants will no longer sometimes mis-believe that they attacked on spawn (which caused a long delay before their first real attack); Plants will quickly move to face the target they are going to attack next, so you can get a better sense for how your actions shape their priorities.

The problem is and has always been that #3 does not work. At all. Ever. 100% broken.

What actually happens is this: -spawn plant at feet of enemy champ -plant attacks enemy champ -plant then swaps to closest minion

The priority system given repeatedly by Riot does not work as stated. If #3 was working, the plant would continue to attack the champ "recently attacked by any plant." That does not happen, and Riot has not given any explanation as to why in any of the many threads asking for clarification since 5.18.

You are clearly shifting power to plants and nerfing Zyra's direct damage capability, so the plant AI conversation really needs to happen now. I don't mean to sound rude at all, but it's pretty exasperating when devs say something works a certain way, it clearly doesn't work that way, and the devs don't engage with any of the posts asking for clarification.