Mage Update : Zyra's current state & possible improvements

Hey guys, after reading the mage update announcement and the Cassiopea thread, I just wanted to make another good discussion but this time on !

Disclaimer: This thread isn't about ranting/complaining/or white knighting the champion but provide an objective and healthy discussion around it and its current state. I may be wrong and as such would gladly receive good criticism about it. I'm not forcing anyone to follow me or my opinion on this champion, I'm just providing feedback due to my personal experience as a Zyra main for multiple years / seasons.

I'm only a Plat Zyra main playing since S3 (and maining her since then) in both support and mid so I may not have the best hindsight on her but I judge myself having enough experience with her to speak.

Let me begin by saying this, knowing a lot of people are rejecting the idea of an update because the WR of a champion is "balanced" :

Yes she can be really strong if you play her well enough( she's regularly around ~50% WR), I'm personally between 58% to 66% WR every season with her so far, but this update is not about making her stronger but making her kit better. Her kit is imo extremely frustrating to play with and against, feels really outdated ( I will explain myself later ) and not really fitting her theme ( will explain later), and as such I really think a Zyra update / rework is necessary.

>1. What aspect is most core or sacred to Zyra's identity?

Now, here is what I think is the most important about Zyra and should be kept through this update:

1.Plants and nature interactions. It should be the core of her theme/kit, because it feels underwhelming atm ( will explain later )

2.Huge teamfighting / AOE ability.

3.Weak when not playing around her strenght (plants) .

4.Mage but with a kit oriented towards utility and control (traps if we follow the lore). Zyra shouldn't be designed for support but for midlane, a lot of midlaners can find their way in the botlane, Zyra as an utility mage should easily find her place here ( or even in jungle), but it doesn't mean that we have to design her solely for the botlane. She's a midlane mage first and foremost.

>2. What issue bothers you the most when playing Zyra?

To be honest, a lot of things. Obviously everyone has a different opinion on this matter, I will try to explain my thinking:

As a whole :

Zyra seems to be in a really bad spot, I'm not talking about win rate or raw power, but about enjoyable gameplay and counter play. She's the slowest character in the game, it's been 2 seasons since we began to focus deeply on speed and fast paced games with a lot of new characters with dashes, with tanky stats, speed buffs on items, speed buff on dragon, and Zyra is the one benefiting the least of these things due to her movespeed and survivability. Every spell of her has a specific amount of time ( delay ) requiring her to stand still, she has the worst ( or nearly the worst ) resistances in the game, her design isn't good due to her having to burst enemies or die because she has to be closer in order to use her abilities ( especially since the range nerfs ) and plants correctly. And her gameplay easily appears as slow and predictible.

Now, let's face it, Zyra is a burst oriented mage ( canon glass mage), no matter how you want to present it, most games come down to either bursting their carries to death (even as a support ) or you dying in an instant, most people will say "But she's balanced ! You die or they die !" because of her obvious lack of mobility and survivability, if the only "counterplay" she has is "destroy her in an instant because she's weak af" well that's honestly a poor definition of counterplay here, just showing it's a poor design. It also brings a lot of problems, because if you're falling behind, well, you won't be able to do much given your own survivability, but if you're ahead, well, you can insta 3 or more enemies at once due to her massive AOE spells. Remember now what Riot began and did with other Burst oriented mages and Assassins, they're generally totally useless ( hi Akali ), or totally OP, or turned into easier to balance Mages ( Hi Ahri ). If we follow this trend, Zyra should get the same treatment and get revisited as a more balanced mage, because atm her kit is really outdated and a pain to balance, especially when most of these champions do possess some kind of skill-based gameplay, Zyra isn't really like that, she's more like "FIIIIIREEEEEEE ALL AT ONCE" and see how it goes afterwards. Sure she can be played differently with a Landry / Rylai / FQC combo, but it comes down to being dependant on items too much instead of the champions' strenghts, furthermore the most effective way is just to be a secondary AP carry for your team and bursting carries down.

I get it that her lore displays her as a fragile individual, and that her amazing teamfighting ability are supposed to explain her really underwhelming fragile state, but it doesn't make sense anymore with all these changes appearing every season pushing her even more into oblivion and the comparison with other champions ( orianna ) showing that they don't really have to bear a weakness like that, and her lore should really be considered for an update because atm it doesn't translate well into her gameplay. Win rate isn't everything, she's also one of the least picked champions, so mostly mains are playing her and newcomers or players are often surprised by her burst, but that's all. Why ? Because she's frustrating to play as AND against, AND there's almost ALWAYS a better and more enjoyable option in every field Zyra covers.

Now let's tackle point by point Zyra's abilities and design.

• Passive: The most obvious flaw in her design. An ability that has to be used when dead ( thus useless when you do not die ) and that takes a while to throw due to a long delay(2sec) before being fully transformed into a plant and ready to fire. Anyway, this passive is the sole example of why Zyra is considered as frustrating, she's the slowest and squishiest character of the game, and as such will die a lot without being able to do anything, Riot knowing that they gave her an obvious passive to use after death in case her burst didn't go off fast enough in the hope of you trading kills at least. You're doomed to die from the start. This design of "burst of die" shouldn't exist to begin with, look at all the most common burst mages and assassins ( Zed, Leblanc, Fizz, Lux, Viktor, Brand, Anivia etc... ) they all have ways to protect themselves with mobility, high resistances, cc, no delays on spells, passives etc... or play around their spells in order to lure the enemy, Zyra doesn't have that. That's literally "fire everything brainlessly and hope that you kill, oh and take that passive for extra chances".[ And it has sometimes a bug firing the missile on its own depending on your last skills combo ]

• Q: Generic AOE mana-hungry spell main source of damage with a plant skin on it, I don't really see how you can explain it otherwise. See Brand's W ? Add less range, less damages, more mana-costs, oh, but with a 1 second less CD. That's basically that. I fail to see how that's really distinctive of any plant-related theme to be honest.

• W: Another arguable spell. Allowing you to place seeds on the map for a limited period of time, showing you a bit of vision in the fow. Triggered by Q or E, seeds transform into different plants, thorn spitter (damage + high range) or vine lasher (30% slow + low range). The thing is that on paper it seems good so far, however this concept is severely hindered by several things : 1- Still a wonky AI, despite the fix attempts ( that also turned out to be a sligh nerf), that sometimes will make your plants not attack for 1 or 2 seconds, or messing with the priority, thus making your vine lasher totally useless ( hence making a TS + rylai the better choice). 2- The low resistances these plants get. Atm these plants are good to use in laning and early teamfights because everyone is lacking items / damages / protection, however your plants don't scale that much with you and will as such begin to be irrelevant in late teamfights, easily killable in an aoe teamfight ( auras like sunfire etc.. ) they don't even last more 0.5 sec, by minute 30 usually the only utility they have is to proc Rylai / Liandry (Relying on items).
  3- They also require you, the slowest and squishiest mage of the game to go into close range in order to manipulate them correctly because you need to "mark" your enemy by auto-attacking him. As such they will rarely be used effectively in lategame teamfights. Too much cons for few pros.
  4- It also takes one spell spot for just a seed that you will have to trigger with another spell. That and the fact that E is almost always better to save due to Zyra's poor survivability or engage potential, you're mostly juggling with one spell all game, it can't be more predictible.

• ** E**: The spell that is the most iconic of Zyra's kit but also the weirdest ever. You have a snare going in line lasting 0.75 seconds to 1.75 seconds, not that bad, but not that good either. HOWEVER you have a 0.5 sec DELAY ( cast time) on it forcing you to stand still, thus completely hindering 30 to 70% of your snare depending on the levels and the distance between you and the opponent, that's also the reason why this spell isn't good as a defensive one and is mostly used as an offensive one in order to catch targets for your teammates or your 0.2+ sec burst, because you will never be able to escape anything due to you having to stop for almost your entire snare duration in early levels while being the slowest character in the game. Furthermore, again, for several seasons the overall speed of champions and the games have been raised, however the E projectile hasn't, and is atm one of the slowest projectiles in the game ( more than half the speed of most cc spells like Syndra's E, Xerath's E etc..), and as such is one of the easiest to dodge, hence why this spell is mostly used to catch enemies offguard or to aim at carries not paying attention to their placement in teamfights.

• R: Another one of her spells that you can't really rely on. Plants-interaction wise, it's poor, only buffing their attack speed and their size, thus they're going off as fast as ever, hence this utility is mostly useful in laning and early fights. Spell-wise, that's basically a huge short range AOE burst damage and will be used as such most of the times ( E[W]Q[W]R is usually the way to go ), however, because of that, when you're behind, this spell will almost become useless because the only other effect it has is a 1sec bump after a 2 seconds delay. Again, this delay is huge, especially when we consider again all the mobility boosts, that you have to commit in order to use it etc... Even a teamfight can be decided before 2 seconds if one of the members gets taken down. Anyway that's a spell that is mostly used as a burst oriented spell on carries ( otherwise they will most likely dodge the damages knowing it takes a while to expand ) or a utility oriented spell when you caught the enemies / are ahead / used FQC/Rylai ( again, relying on items ), otherwise, it's pretty weak and difficult to rely on.

TL;DR of the faults in her design :

• She's never the "first choice" because she has too much cons for few pros.
• Her playstyle is frustrating, "burst or die", most effective way at least.
• Gameplay not really focused on plants and nature like it should be. She's more like a "normal mage but with a plants based skin" at the moment.
• Plants AI is still wonky despite the fix attempts and plants are too easily destroyed in teamfights. Plants are mostly about early agression in lane but fall off in late really fast.
• Plants variety. The melee plant (E) is rarely used because of its limitations, it's nearly always better to use the Q plants because of damages / range + a rylai proc.
• She's too squishy despite being the slowest character in the game, hence every season she falls even more behind with all the mobility buffs, tanky champions or champions with dashes, and you can never get out of a situation if the opponents do not misplay.
• Delay on every single one of her spells where she's forced to stand still ( especially E knowing it pretty much nullifies 0.5 sec of the root )
• Passive needs to go. Forcing you to die or useless if you don't die, and it's not like you can capitalize a lot on your death due to its limitations in comparison to Karthus or even Kog Maw.
• Rely heavily on items to be effective. Nerf, remove or tweak these items and she will fall harder into oblivion than ever, proof that her kit needs to be updated.

Here is a question that I'm adding :

3. Ideas on how should she be changed ?

• Give her a new passive, one where she eventually can gather/grow plants in the forest or bushes, or even increase her limits for example. And where she could maybe use "photosyntesis" by absorbing one of her plants in order to counter her mana/sustain issues.
• Give her a more "strategic" playstyle centered around her plants, where she should cover a specific area and place them with care in order make use of them.
• Additional work on plants AI and variety, 3 types with different strenghts would be great.
• Some spells should be reworked ( Q / R )
• Allow her to cast some spells while moving ( especially E ) or Allow her to be faster than my grandma.
• Tweak resistances in order to fit the change of playstyle, maybe make her adapted for longer fights with plants sustain etc..
• Allow the seed placements to maybe interact with her spells ? Allowing her to extend the R area for example etc..
• Take some of her burst and place it into her plants in order to turn her into a more reliable source of damages, tweak the ratios.

The way I see it : We don't really have a "zoning/strategic" mage atm, but if we follow Zyra's lore, she's most likely the one deserving this title, with all the plants, thorns, traps she should be able to set up as a "predator". She should be rewarded for placing plants correctly and making use of them to engage / counter engage etc.. She could also benefit from fighting in the forest more than any other champion due to her nature as a plant-related champion ( it could also make her jungle role easier and ultimately introduce a real carry mage into the jungle ).

To conclude, TL;DR: Zyra is atm by essence a pure burst oriented mage, focused around her spells but with sidekicks known as seeds and plants which is honestly degrading when we consider the possibilities of the champion. She's the result of an old way to design champions and because of that is one of the most "left behind" mages with every new patch etc... She's not that bad ATM because of 2 things : good synergy with some items ( rylai / liandry ) and bursting carries, but other than that, she doesn't have anything going for her and is the one who's being left behind with every meta change.

Here are my thoughts about her, I know that it's solely my opinion and lots of you won't agree with me, but I think that's a good base to start a discussion and eventually discuss with/help the team to update her. Thanks for reading up until now for those who survived :p

PS: Sorry about my poor english skills, not a native english speaker PS2: Still waiting for a crystal/snow/Sakura based Zyra skin RIOT

**EDIT: Seeing how many misinterpreted my opinion R I will try to clarify my thoughts. I DO NOT WISH FOR IT TO GET REMOVED nor reworked in a big way. The thing is that I find her ult atm unreliable mostly because of the meta changes these past few years increasing the global speed of the game, 2 seconds is extremely long and you can't just assume perfectly everybody's position 2 seconds later, thus at this point it's more of a gamble relying on your teammates and enemies than your own skill. **

**Look at similar AOE ults, Amumu ? Instant. Janna ? Instant. Viktor ? Instant. Orianna ? Instant. Galio ? Instant. Nunu ? You're the one controlling when to stop etc... Zyra is the only one having a huge barrier on her ult like a several seconds gap to expand her damages and before finishing on an utility oriented touch. **

I wouldn't like to lose it, but I would honestly like it if it became more reliable and dependant of your own skill rather than completely unknown factors, for example choosing when to "close the trap" etc.. It would make it a more reliable threat rather than a predictable spell.