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Zyra and Her Update. Lets Pick Apart This Plant Lady One Petal at a Time!

Billy Potatoes··4 votes·1,384 views

{{summoner:2}} Share Your Thoughts and Opinions in the Comments{{summoner:2}} Note: The analysis section begins after the subtitle 'Let the Fun Begin! The Analysis:'

Zyra was a strong support in season 3, but has never be able to rise to that level again. This discussion will address why Zyra has never been able to be a top tier champion since season 3, and will provide possible ways to address those issues. Please join the discussion with your thoughts, so we can help make the Zyra update a success.

Zyra The Champion: When released, Zyra took to the mid lane with some crazy damage numbers and range. After a few rounds of nerfs and balancing out, she found her home in the bottom lane as a support. She sometimes would venture into the mid lane, but she was primarily a support. This discussion will focus on Support Zyra, with Mid as her secondary role.

What Zyra Does Well: -Lane bully -Tons of damage -Moderate utility with her E snare, R delayed knock up, and Vine Lasher Plant slow -Plants apply spell effects, such as Liandry's Torment -Gardening

Where Zyra Falls Short -Mobility, mostly due to long cast times on her abilities -Being relevant when behind -Plant AI is difficult to rely on or control

Lets Ask Some Questions: Zyra can do massive amounts of damage, even as a support. The fact that players typically build damage items instead of classic support items should be considered when discussing her damage. A design choice needs to be made. Should she have the high damage with low mobility, or trade in some damage for more utility/mobility? Cast your vote in the poll below.

Next, interactions. Due to her plant based nature, it is tempting to add interactions with the jungle or bushes across the map. Meaningful interactions are important, but to keep true to the Zyra we know and love, lets keep the interactions within her kit (i.e. her plants). However if you think she should interact with the map in some way, Let us know in the comments section.

[Edit] Would You Want Zyra to Interact with the Map? Link to poll: http://strawpoll.me/6650219

Last quesion, which of Zyra's abilities are the most important in her game play. We need to determine what makes Zyra the wonderful champ we love. Is she defined by her E root? Does her ultimate give her the play style we want? Is it the plants? Seeds? What about her passive? Let us know in the comments section.

[Edit] If You Could Only Keep One of Zyra's Current Abilities, Which Would You Pick? Link to Poll: http://strawpoll.me/6650252

Let The Fun Begin! The Analysis: I have my own ideas and opinions on what changes should be made to Zyra. However,** I am going to wait four days (Until Saturday, Jan 30th) to post it here,** so I do not influence people's opinion on what they like about Zyra.

Zyra We need to figure out what Zyra is in order to determine what she can become.Zyra

7 Comments

Billy Potatoes1 votes

//Reserved

hpp31 votes

I'll just describe my favourite parts of each ability.

Q: I like that it's aoe, short cd, long-ish range, not blocked by minions

W: I like that it doesn't cost extra mana to create plants, and plants immediately attack a champion its spawned under for a bit of extra harass. Don't care about the CDR at all. Being able to store seeds is nice but not essential. I like plants for the harass and zoning in lane rather than their contribution in teamfights (they always die too quickly to aoe dots or spend the entire fight hitting a tank).

E: Some form of long range cc is essential, but I'm not too crazy about this spell. It's slow and the duration is pitiful until it's maxed, and the CD doesn't decrease. It's nice that it's aoe and ignores minions though.

R: I like the upfront aoe damage for the burst use case and the fact that it chains well into or from the rest of the combo. The massive aoe zone control is great for disengaging teamfights. Enraging plants is a gimmicky mechanic that I don't think really adds anything.

Passive: Completely rework it into something weird, or just slight changes to make it more reliable. I don't really care. I'm fine with the current passive other than how hard it is to hit (way harder than Kog).

Overall: I really really like that Zyra has aoe burst that comes out very quickly. In my opinions, plants are useful for getting a little extra harass from poke or zoning in lane, or for blocking off a chase, but have limited use in teamfights. In teamfights, Zyra's contribution is mainly the aoe EQR damage and cc.

Gimmicks: no if it means making her less reliable (she's already unreliable enough).

Most important ability: Q (outside of teamfights), R (teamfights).

Billy Potatoes1 votes

I like your evaluation of Zyra. AoE is something I would agree is core to her game play. I would also say abilities going through minions, like her E does, is also something I would like to see kept. I would like to know what you would think of if plants became more reliable in teamfights. What if Zyra's ult didn't just make her plants attack faster, but made them take 50% reduced damage. This would emphasize her ult as a 'zone of don't come in here' because it would not only knock people up who stay too long, but also make them deal with some temporarily powerful plants.

Namisaur1 votes

The first thing I would like to address for now is her passive upon death.

On it's own, it's not very good most of the time, but I believe the option to be able to use the true damage skill shot should still be there.

I believe many Zyra players do not like having a passive that activates upon death, and I can understand why, but I think it suits her well as an incredibly immobile mage that could easily get caught out and die quickly. I believe giving her more options to help her team after death increases her usefulness without needing to buff her regular gameplay into oppressive territory.

I would want her to have 4 different abilities to choose from upon death, but only one of them could be used.

R: Same true damage, long range missile as always.

Q: Spawns a Thorn Spitter within 500 range of Zyra's dead body, fully controllable by the player on who to auto attack. Should be very slightly tanker than a normal thorn splitter, but same damage and same range. This would obviously do a lot less damage than the Vengeful thorn in a chase team fight, or in a quick skirmish, but could potentially do more damage in a chaotic teamfight in the jungle if ignored.

W: Shoots an AOE-circle bomb of pollen at target area within X range of zyra's dead body. I was thinking of something like a cross over between Teemo shrooms and Ziggs' minefield. The pollen bomb would tick a small amount of DOT as well as providing an AOE slow. This would obviously do the least damage (unless lyandries) but would provide great utility for teammates in the event that Zyra dies early in a fight.

E: Zyra shoots 3 vines in a cone to knock enemies back towards Zyra's dead body a small distance and slows them; very similar to thresh flay, but longer range. Same as above, can provide utility for team when dead. Since this provides utility, it should also do considerably less damage than R and Q.

So now we have 2 options for Zyra to do damage upon death, and 2 options to provide utility for the team.

I will make another post later addressing what might be good ideas in the event of a complete rework, but I'm also completely okay to remain with her current gameplay and the post-death abilities above.

Billy Potatoes1 votes

I like the passive ideas, specifically the passive's ability when you use E. The idea of vines going out and kind of doing a mini Ori ult when Zyra dies would be really interesting. It could also open up chances to, if you are going to die, position yourself to still do as much as you can.

kruffalon1 votes

An idea I had for Zyra was to move the seeds to her passive to let her have a new skill.

New double passive: while Zyra is alive she charges up seeds (just like her current W) - if she has max charges she drops the next one she would store on the ground by her feet. When Zyra dies it's the same as now.

By moving the seeds to the passive Zyra needs to be able to control them somehow, this leads to a new mechanic. But also that her W is freed to host a new skill

New mechanic: After casting a spell Zyra can plant a seed (if she has any in store) by using the same spell again before the cast animation is finished. The seed will land by the cursor.

This essentially doesn't change anything, you still do the same combos, but with the same key instead of two different

New example skill: Zyra casts out a small brushy thing (about the same area as her seeds) that will knockback any enemy it hits (in relationship to Zyra). If Zyra plants a seed a plant will grow that will knockback any enemy it hits (range between her current plants) and that is also targetable by allies. If Zyra or her allies hits the plant and are within range the plant pulls them to it.

This example skill would give Zyra both a new disengage but also an escape for herself and her allies. In one way countering her biggest con: being slow, while making her escape about her plants and skill and not just a buff to her basestats

There are ofc problems with this, such as:

  • loosing the ability to place seeds for vision
  • loosing 10% cdr on max level - this mostly affects the ult as the Q & E get a new skill to rotate with
  • mana costs need to be adjusted for Q & E as she now needs to be able to also cast the new W
  • very powerful lvl 1-2 since she gets her seeds for free and can use them from the beginning
jimethn1 votes

I know everyone thinks her passive sucks, and it does, but here's the thing: By having such a low power budget on her passive, the rest of her skills can be awesome. If they make her passive actually useful the rest of her kit is going to suffer. =/

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