Zyra's plant AI has to be considered for her mage update

Lalaboxx·2/14/2016, 11:21:32 AM·45 votes·2,518 views

First of all I'd like to appreciate that you guys at riot looked at her plant Ai some time ago, it really helped her having an overall better and reliant damage output. However, sometimes I find myself wondering why my plants won't attack anything, even though I marked enemy champions with my autoattacks(watch the vid: leona is the only enemy unit within my TS's range yet my plant didn't even try to attack). It's just frustrating seein my plants just standing there, doing exactly nothing, so I'd very appreciate it if you'd looked into that topic closely.

25 Comments

Ðelofasht2/14/2016, 12:44:42 PM5 votes

I think an update to her Plant AI should also hit anyone who has AI units that auto attack, I have seen Heimers turrets just ignore people for 2 seconds before determining that they should be shooting them, same for Yorick's ghouls and rare Malz Voidling will get confused. It is extremely unrewarding to setup a good play and then watch the AI simply fail. In fact I would almost rather have all of them be set to spam an AoE in a given direction on summoning (or move a specific direction while spamming that attack) rather than giving them targetting at all. That would make the decision about where to have it attack in the hands of the player and also make the counterplay to recognize while direction it is attacking and not atand in front of it. Good for positioning zoning and things, more consistent and predictable, they should truly consider that.

Casri2/14/2016, 12:01:25 PM4 votes

Lol, that video is unbelievable. I have had similar experiences too. Plants are still very unreliable other than to proc thunderlord's and apply Rylai/Liandry a couple of times. I'm also convinced Haunted Zyra is still bugged out (and I wish the visual of the root matched the hitbox).

Additionally, something needs to be done about plant durability too if Riot want plants to be the mainstay of Zyra's kit. Ambient AoE (Sunfire Cape/Mundo/Shyvana/Amumu/Tibbers auras etc) and DoTs take them down way too fast.

The recent AI changes were nice: plants change targets a lot more smoothly and they remember their previous target if it leaves and re-enters plant-auto range, but they are undoubtedly still not the greatest.

FantasySniper2/14/2016, 11:33:31 PM2 votes

They've been even worse lately. Sometimes they just sit there and eke out a single attack before they die.

SociopathFriend2/14/2016, 8:55:55 PM2 votes

That's probably one reason Zyra and Malz are on the Mage update- they likely have new toys to play with in regards to the AI.

A Miss Fortune2/14/2016, 11:26:00 PM1 votes

Aside from bugfixes I think simply allowing Zyra's plants to prioritize champions over everything else would give Zyra a tremendous buff for her Mid lane and Support roles. It's pretty stupid that Zyra's plants often will just hit nearby minions rather than the enemy team unless you use her significantly shorter ranged auto attacks. It seems kind of like her own plants counter Zyra herself.

KoKoboto2/14/2016, 2:04:26 PM1 votes

Sometimes I have experiences where I place a plant behind a wall and I have vision over the wall and a enemy is CLEARLY in the plant's range. The plant doesn't attack though :/ pretty annoying when playing mid lane

5050BS2/15/2016, 12:19:41 AM1 votes

They fix them on the PBE once and she became what I would call competitive for mid lane.

They then reverted the BUG FIX

Elewd2/15/2016, 6:51:53 AM1 votes

i wish they just pushed that ai fix on zyra's plants to live instead of going "oh she can actually lane really well now lets revert this, can't have that happen again" =\ i was really looking forward to that ai fix too. i love midlane zyra, shes so fun to play but god damn her plants are useless

Blainezy2/15/2016, 2:41:13 PM1 votes

Yes! I've made tons of posts about her plant AI being derped and recently made a post about her plants being useless and one hit by everything. Everyone just wanted to flame saying she's on the Mage update list, which I know, but she needs a little love to be semi playable until she's fixed

Nekusen2/15/2016, 4:11:44 PM1 votes

I hope they fix Heimer turrets as well, they have awful and frustrating targeting ai.