Ideas & QOL stuff for mid Zyra and other mages

Moncho··9 votes·5,532 views

Hallo :D

I would like to present some ideas that could make Zyra mid more viable. Currently there isn’t much reason to pick her in the mid lane over the support role because: • they pretty much build the same items and still dish out the same amounts of damage • she doesn’t excel like other mid liners when they either get more gold, kills and xp. • There’s is a point where your plants can’t deal enough damage in the late game because they get killed before they can fire their attacks. This is quite evident if you look at Zyra’s winrate in the late game as it just plummets downhill in nearly all ranks on op.gg. It also explains why her build is so reliant on sustained dps (eg liandrys and rylais) rather than heavy ap build so that she does consistent damage.

However aside from that, the only benefit she does get out of mid is that she can get more gold and more exp. In order to address these issues, I used her laning benefits and combining them with some of my ideas that should make Zyra better in the mid lane without impacting support Zyra in the order of priority:

  1. Make plant’s attack speed scale with ability power. Eg maybe like +3% attack speed per 50ap. Even though her ult gives her plants attack speed if it connects with her plants, but throughout the entire game, the plants do not otherwise gain any attack speed which is why they fall off in the late game. By making it scale with ability power makes mid Zyra viable is that she can get more ap faster in her build meaning her plants will scale better too compared to Zyra support where she gets ap slower and her total ap varies (usually either 150 ap, 300ap from my experience of playing Zyra) depending on her build which should not impact her much as support. What this also means is that you can build more ap on her and still do dps rather than relying on the dps build which gives less ap in comparison.
  2. Spawn plants per target hit by her q or e. While this makes her a bit oppressive in the early game, it will significantly help her in the late game. This is because it feels horrible when you hit your full combo and there weren’t any seeds around. Even though she generates seeds with her passive and on her w, you can’t always depend cos they might not be up at the right moment. To prevent her from abusing this in the early game, increase the mana cost on her q and e and limit the amount of plants spawn when hitting an enemy. Eg rank 1 spawns only 1, rank 3 spawns 2, rank 5 spawns 3.
  3. In addition to her passive on her w when killing a unit, it should also give mana. Just like what Riot did with Brand to help him out in the mid lane.

I also think this attack speed scaling should also to given to other pets like Heimerdinger turrets and Annie’s tibbers to make them consistent throughout the game because they also face a similar problem like Zyra. But they should not receive it in the way like Ivern’s daisy with rank, because these two can be played as a support or do not take many ap items (eg it would be busted on Heimerdinger who could go zz’rot and banner).

Also another thing about Annie. Can her molten shield deal damage from any source of damage she takes rather than AA. It’s kinda weird having this ability in the mid lane when she’s versing against mages who uses spells rather than AA’s. Also can Annie and Lissandra get buffs toward their base armor? It is horrendously low and its hurts because they have lower base health than in previous seasons (Eg. Lissandra had like 580 health until they stripped off 30 of it in season 5) and also they used to dominate AD assassins like Yasuo, Zed and Talon but instead they’re the ones getting dominated. It would be nice to bring them up a bit because I’ve been seeing much too much Yasuo and Zed’s solo carry their games. It would be nice to have like natural counters to indirectly nerf them. But that’s just my own opinion though…

So yeh I hope this might lead Zyra and other mages in a better direction. But like I said these are just my opinions. Tried my best to make it as clear and concise as possible. I hardly ever post stuff. But I hope this post helps. Thx for reading.

6 Comments

FutureCreator4 votes

rank 5 spawns 3

No. Getting 9+ plants late game is not something I ever want to see.

Moncho1 votes

Maybe I phrased it incorrectly, but her q or e at rank 1 hits 5 enemies, it spawns 1 plant, at rank 3 spawns 2, and rank 5spawns 3. It will not spawn x number of plants per target hit, but increases the number of plants by how many enemies are hit but capped by its level. That said it does sound a bit too much even if it is conditional in the way it has hit at least 3 champs to spawn a max of 3 plants with q or e, and hit surrounding seeds. So she'll probably have about around 10 plants active if it all connects. She would also probably synergise too well with plant attack speed, especially with this amount of plants. But the idea of it was to give plant reliability and reward for landing her spells.

Zyrannosaurus3 votes

{quoted}

Hallo :D

I would like to present some ideas that could make Zyra mid more viable. Currently there isn’t much reason to pick her in the mid lane over the support role because: • they pretty much build the same items and still dish out the same amounts of damage • she doesn’t excel like other mid liners when they either get more gold, kills and xp. • There’s is a point where your plants can’t deal enough damage in the late game because they get killed before they can fire their attacks. This is quite evident if you look at Zyra’s winrate in the late game as it just plummets downhill in nearly all ranks on op.gg. It also explains why her build is so reliant on sustained dps (eg liandrys and rylais) rather than heavy ap build so that she does consistent damage.

However aside from that, the only benefit she does get out of mid is that she can get more gold and more exp. In order to address these issues, I used her laning benefits and combining them with some of my ideas that should make Zyra better in the mid lane without impacting support Zyra in the order of priority:

  1. Make plant’s attack speed scale with ability power. Eg maybe like +3% attack speed per 50ap. Even though her ult gives her plants attack speed if it connects with her plants, but throughout the entire game, the plants do not otherwise gain any attack speed which is why they fall off in the late game. By making it scale with ability power makes mid Zyra viable is that she can get more ap faster in her build meaning her plants will scale better too compared to Zyra support where she gets ap slower and her total ap varies (usually either 150 ap, 300ap from my experience of playing Zyra) depending on her build which should not impact her much as support. What this also means is that you can build more ap on her and still do dps rather than relying on the dps build which gives less ap in comparison.
  2. Spawn plants per target hit by her q or e. While this makes her a bit oppressive in the early game, it will significantly help her in the late game. This is because it feels horrible when you hit your full combo and there weren’t any seeds around. Even though she generates seeds with her passive and on her w, you can’t always depend cos they might not be up at the right moment. To prevent her from abusing this in the early game, increase the mana cost on her q and e and limit the amount of plants spawn when hitting an enemy. Eg rank 1 spawns only 1, rank 3 spawns 2, rank 5 spawns 3.
  3. In addition to her passive on her w when killing a unit, it should also give mana. Just like what Riot did with Brand to help him out in the mid lane.

I also think this attack speed scaling should also to given to other pets like Heimerdinger turrets and Annie’s tibbers to make them consistent throughout the game because they also face a similar problem like Zyra. But they should not receive it in the way like Ivern’s daisy with rank, because these two can be played as a support or do not take many ap items (eg it would be busted on Heimerdinger who could go zz’rot and banner).

Also another thing about Annie. Can her molten shield deal damage from any source of damage she takes rather than AA. It’s kinda weird having this ability in the mid lane when she’s versing against mages who uses spells rather than AA’s. Also can Annie and Lissandra get buffs toward their base armor? It is horrendously low and its hurts because they have lower base health than in previous seasons (Eg. Lissandra had like 580 health until they stripped off 30 of it in season 5) and also they used to dominate AD assassins like Yasuo, Zed and Talon but instead they’re the ones getting dominated. It would be nice to bring them up a bit because I’ve been seeing much too much Yasuo and Zed’s solo carry their games. It would be nice to have like natural counters to indirectly nerf them. But that’s just my own opinion though…

So yeh I hope this might lead Zyra and other mages in a better direction. But like I said these are just my opinions. Tried my best to make it as clear and concise as possible. I hardly ever post stuff. But I hope this post helps. Thx for reading.

Good luck sweetie. I've been begging Riot to address Zyra's current state for over 6 months now. They refuse to do anything about her and instead care more about Sonia's "AD" ( Huge slap in the face )

Moncho1 votes

Yeh it kinda sucks that Sona is getting a buff coming her way after a few nerfs earlier this season. It does feel like Zyra was left in the dust, but recently I think Meddler said they’ve been testing some stuff on her but was unsuccessful.

Ahri Body Pillow1 votes

Hiya! As someone who plays quite a bit of Zyra, I appreciate that she's getting some attention on these boards. Before i talk about your ideas, I'd like to point out these aren't exactly QoL changes.

  1. I think this would make her a little too strong, honestly. Her plants are already brutal as is. The only buff I'd consider is making them a bit tankier.

  2. This is actually a great idea. This way, we could incentivize actually hitting skillshots and give her a passive that's not RNG based.

  3. Again, I think this might be a bit much. Zyra is already an insane lane bull. This might push her over the edge, but it might put her back mid, which is cool.

As for your other suggestions, it would be interesting for mages with pets to be oriented around them a bit more, especially Annie. Also, I dont think Annie and Lissandra need base armor buffs. They both have tools to reduce damage done to them/keep enemies off of them.

Moncho1 votes

Hallo. Thanks for responding.

  1. Yeh it might be too strong, especially the example I gave. Like 600 ap would mean like 36% attack speed which is more than half of what the ult gives which would be crazy. But the idea of it was to make her plants keep up with the game naturally, similarly to how champs get attack speed naturally over time while also firing enough attacks in the small window of time before they get killed in the late game. Speaking of plant tankiness, I thought of something just now. Plants should have health like they did before we got this generalised plant health (which wasn’t actually bad). Maybe a combination of both. So plants should have health scaling with level and ap, AA should take a flat % of plant health (eg. Ranged 50%/33%/25%? And melee 100%/75%?) OR have health scaling per level and ap, but AA are increased by a % (ranged is 50% and melee is 100%). It might be too easy to kill for adcs so the damage to plants might need to be capped equal to 50% to 33% to the plant’s max health. Or if it is too weak in bot lane, give plants extra health depending on how many champs are around/hit. This is because I don’t like how abilities are weighted the same as AA, as this makes plant clearing a bit too easy, especially for melees. Hopefully this won’t affect supports or tanks too much when clearing out her plants.

  2. I had this idea when I was trying to figure out what Zyra’s rework looked like. Not sure if this would be good to replace the RNG passive, because the system somewhat rewards you even if you don’t hit your abilities on a target. But if this is the direction of her plants, I have no ideas for a new passive.

  3. Zyra can function well without getting mana on kills so yeh it’s just something extra or if some mana cost on her spells are increased.

As for Lissandra and Annie, they don’t desperately need buffs to their base armor. Like they’ll still lane safely and keep enemies off of them. But it would certainly help them make trades against ad champs.

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