@Repertoir I know this looks like a super long post, but it only takes 5 minutes to read. Please.

I want to analyse everything happened to Zyra since preseason. Players who main her enjoy her less and less as the season progresses, because her changes feel to have been rushed and have never been revisited again with all the poor interactions she was confronted with when she hit live.

What happened:

In preseason (patch 7.24) the balance team had 3 things in mind for her:

• Buff her overall, because runes reforged was actually a nerf for Zyra
• Make her more viable for other roles than support (Mainly mid, but changes were done for jungle as well)
• Make her less of a stomper in lower MMR

So how did Riot approach that? Doesnt start too bad actually:

They increased Zyra's E damage by 10 per rank after rank 1. Zyra lost damage everywhere with the new runes system. Everything in her kit deals damage, thats why she used to go full mpen runes until season 8. That's all she wanted and all she needed. With Runes Reforged Zyra got access to alot of unnecessary stuff. There was not a real "Yea, thats a Zyrarune" except scorch in the entire system. So a damagebuff was needed for her.

To make Zyra a valueable midlaner again, they decided to give a resetsystem on her W, to make farming more valueable. So, Zyra would get 20% CD refund on every CS and even 100% on cannons/kills/assists. Sound really great. But, why did the number of Midlane Zyra's drop even further and why did she basically get killed from being played on that role?

Before i talk about that i want to give one note for everyone who doesnt or never played alot of Zyra. The people, who loved Zyra ever since release hated just one thing: Her old passive. Zyra has such a well rounded kit already, just the passive was in most of her games useless the way it was. So her update included a new passive, which spawned plants around her. And her passive is again the biggest flaw in her design. Its actually completely broken and oppressive in the earlygame and loses its use the longer the game goes on. You stop playing around your passive the moment laningphase is over, because you simply cant play around it. The fact Zyra's passive was so oppressive was the main reason, Zyra was broken in Season 6.

Change #3, the by far most impactful of these changes: The passive

So what did they do? They decided to actually buff that passive, by reducing the seedspawnrange, so she gets more useful seeds the entire time. On top of that they increased her plantduration from 5-7.5 to 8. They made her more oppressive in lane than she actually was, what she was not needing at all.

However, there was one major compensation for all of that: Zyra's plant HP.

They changed alot of numbers, but what they did if you compare the correlation of those are: - Reduced Zyra's plant HP by 1/3, since it lost its scaling on W. - Doubled the damage they take from singletarget abilities and melee autoattacks (Means they oneshot plants) - Made plants 2x more tanky against dots/multihit. - only ulted plants get those bonus HP, Zyra used to have on every plant.

Well, if you compare the amount of additional plants she gets on W and P now, it looks fine and fair right? Changes dont seem too bad on paper. And it should be definetly be a nerf in low MMR right?

No, it only effects higher MMR. Let me tell you why.

Damage done by AI has one major issue. It is more effective in lower MMR than higher MMR. A silverplayer has a way harsher time to handle Yoricks Ghouls, Malzahars Voidlings or in this case Zyra's plants. Most of the times they ignore these damagesources of their enemies, instead of killing them. So, Riots approach on nerfing Zyra in lower MMR was to make them more squishy at any stage of the game. And thats exactly not helping at all to solve this issue. Low MMR players dont clear/attack/kill Zyra's plants as Riot stated themselves. So, how does it help to make them more squishy? In fact they get a 3s longer plant duration in lane. This plant HP change effects 95% only higher MMR players, because they know how to handle Zyra's plants better. You see Braums and Alistars simply instantly kill those plants with an autoattack. Whats worse is that Champions that get snared instantly autoattack the nearest enemy unit. The fact those are usually Zyraplants after an EW makes plants instantly die against melees on spawn without input of the enemy player. The game kills the plant, not the player. And thats just unfair.

Misconception of Zyra's gameplay

Zyra's base early strength was raised by so much in 7.24, that she got less exciting to play. Her passive requires 0 skill, is her by far strongest part of her kit now and you cant even control it. Everything of Zyra is balanced around her passive, when it originally was only supposed to be a bonus to a perfect kit. What happens after lane? You cant make use of your strength anymore. Her scaling is low, because historically old Liandries and her mpen Runes would cover that up. Zyra has as only mage in the entire game a winrate graph that only drops. If you play Zyra, you play against the time. You are literally anti-scaling. The only reason Zyra sits on average 51% winrate, is the fact she has 56% winrate in the first 20 minutes. I dont think any Mage in the game should have the fantasy of becoming weaker and less successful with every minute. And thats why Zyra Mid is dead as well. She doesnt scale anymore. Liandries is a different item now and she cant even proc it reliably, because 2 random AoE abilities in messy teamfights already kill plants. Her Q scaling is bad since its supposed to be a plantspawn ability rather than damage spell since her update in 6.9. Its hitbox is at the right angle of her E, so you can never fullcombo an entire team but usually just 2 people. And last but not least putting points into your W is meaningless, because it only gives lower CD now, which you dont even need since you get refunds on kills and assists in teamfights. So putting points into your basic abilities post level 9 is almost irrelevant. Who would play a champ like that in the midlane? On top of that she has lower scaling HP compared to other mages. These are her issues in midlane, not even her immobility. She cant execute her gameplay by herself midgame onwards, pushing her even further to support.

The quanitity of Zyra's plants increased in favor of quality, while making it the most important damage source. We got so many interactions with this change, making it so frustrating to play. You lost alot of outplay potential and mechanics. Like when a Champion with Tiamat (e.g. Trundle or Lee) make it on top of you, you would spawn EW plant on top of yourself while retreating. Now the Lee can just auto + tiamat you and kill the plant in the meantime. If your plant is ulted he just needs his E or another auto on you to kill the plant, while not even focussing it. A single Gankplank ult wave (out of 12/18) kills any ULTED plant in an eyeblink because its coded as AoE and not Multihit. Corki oneshots plants as ranged champion. One funny point is that when 7.24 was on PBE a Rioter has noted that you can refresh Zyra's plant HP and duration now with her ult. In fact you could do that with Zyra since she got released, but now its impossible to execute, because her plants are either full hp or dead. There is no reactiontime to ult plants at halflife. Before you had the range of 1-6HP. The only competitve Zyragame i think this split was SirNukesAlot in EULCS. He would just hardint and state on twitter that he dies not even understand why he was so useless. He was playing against doublemelee botlane, against who Zyra has no way to deal damage, with her plants being nonexistant. In fact the enemy ADC was a Yasuo, who could use Zyra's plants as gapcloser with E while oneshotting them (single target ability). Same thing against Irelia. You actually help the enemy team than anything else when you spawn plants against those champions.

Almost every Diamond+ Zyramain complains about her, while people in lower MMR dont even feel that anything has changed and dont want changes "in fear she gets op and banned and popular" and bring that as arguments when its not even the point. When there were about 7+ Zyra streamers on twitch exactly one year ago, there are only 2 left and one of them doesnt play Zyra half of the time shes streaming. Zyra was already mostly only played by dedicated mains and yet her playrate in the last 4 patches dropped by 29%. The Zyra community is just shrinking. There were so many posts in the last 8 months asking for a revisit. But, except a rootdurationbuff she was ignored. People are not asking for more overall power, they just want Zyra her power to be shifted to be fun to play again, instead of frustrating. Her plants are so weak, that its actually worth to charge through them instead of being afraid of taking damage. Her passive needs to be the weakest part of her kit rather than the strongest. She needs a nerf to her earlygame and a compensation to her mid-lategame. It feels like every change Zyra ever got was rushed and not even brainstormed about. I personally think its a shame Zyra has been like that for 9 months now without being revisited. I want to play against my enemies, not against time or the game when I play Zyra. I want my plants to be a threat. I want to be in control of my damage, not the enemies or the passive. I want to see and feel the gap between good Zyra's and the greatest Zyra's again.