Zyra needs work
Zyra is currently in a bad position, as a devoted Zyra main with over 1M combined mastery points spread over several accounts i'm here to express my concerns and only hope that this thread draws the attention of a Riot employee.
She is pretty balanced in terms of damage but her kit is inferior to that of any mid laner or support. I didn't realize this myself until the nerf on her plants made it into the live game and it is in this thread i'm going to discuss and clear things out to why she is currently in such a bad position.
Let's start off with her Passive Her passive is not all too bad but can it be made better? Yes. The range on her passive should see a big decrease to eliminate useless seed spawns and give her passive a new purpose.
Instead of waiting and hoping that seeds spawn near the enemy, the range on her passive should be decreased so that seeds only spawn in a medium-sized radius around her which are to be used only defensively.
Zyra is extremely immobile and squishy so running away isn’t an option, she has to put up a fight on the spot to be able to get away. As a zone mage she should do what she does best. Zone. This way when assasins dive her and junglers gank her she will be able to put up more of a fight thanks to the seeds scattered around close to her. Somewhat smaller than the size of Jannas R sounds relevant to me.
This is how i personally see it, the seeds on her W should be used offensively and the seeds on her passive should be used defensively.
And her Q Let's ignore the fact that the change on her Q from a circular shape to a rectangular shape was a huge nerf and talk about something else for now.
As if it wasn't enough that her Q is currently hard to hit it also has a low range and delayed cast time to top it off and make things way worse for her. Zyra has to put herself in way too much danger just to get a Q off, giving most champions the oppurtunity to jump on and even then this ability is easily dodged due to its shape and cast time.
A relevant change on her Q would be to increase the range to put Zyra in a safer spot, so that can she can poke without putting herself into too much danger, shorten the delayed cast time to make it somewhat harder to dodge to give Zyra some form of reliable damage and last but not least, this addition isn’t neccessary but it did sound appealing to me without taking things over the top. When deadly spines explode, spines should also shoot out to the outer rectangle dealing (30%?) less damage, with this change she will suit the AoE mage title that she has been given way more than she does now and making her plants focus the enemy won't be as difficult.
And her W Theres not much to say about this ability other than the fact that it needs buffs. She can only produce one seed every 20 seconds during the earlier stages of the game, you don't need to be a genius to realize that that is INSANE.
One plant that doesn't target the enemy and dies almost instantly every 20 seconds forces her to be completely dependant on the seeds randomly scattered around in awkward places by her passive.
Zyra has to put herself in awkward and possibly dangerous positions to be close to her seeds, this isn’t how it should be. Zyra shouldn’t be controlled by her seeds, she should be the one to control her seeds.
A relevant change would be to make it so that Zyra can now store 3 seeds, however with one exception. Her third seed will be on a 3 second cooldown after she has placed her first two. Also buff her W to 11/10/9/8/7 but make it so that it doesn't get affected by CDR. This way she won’t have to be dependant on the seeds spawned by her passive.
Her E and last but not least her ultimate Those two abilities are in my opinion completely fine and don’t need any changes.
Long story short? She's a midlaner completely uncapable of going mid due to her inferior kit and is also in a bad position in the support lane. Her kit needs work. Pretty please?
