After taking a two year long break, Zyra re-emerged on the stage of Worlds in Week 2 of competition, as Jo "Core JJ" Yong-in locks her in during the Samsung (SSG) vs Royal Never Give Up (RNG) match. From that appearance onward, Zyra was picked 21 more times with staggering 63% win rate and average share of 18% of team's total damage. Using Core JJ's great performances on the champion, we will try to explain Zyra's role and way she should be played.

Cho "Mata" Se-hyeong weighting options as Samsung surprises RNG with Zyra pick.

What are reasons to pick/not pick Zyra?

Pros:

Strong laning phase
Zone control
Pushing power
Disengage and counter-engage
High AP damage from support
Neutral objective control

Cons:

Prone to ganks
Squishy
Low mobility
Weak roaming
Unreliable engage
Low comeback potential

Abilities from Support Perspective

Passive: Garden of Thorns

Zyra plants 1 Seed (occasionally 2) in her vicinity, up to a maximum of 8 planted at any one time.

A good Zyra player knows how to utilize her passive properly. Zyra plants seed every 12 seconds and it lasts for 45 seconds. Planting your seeds before the start of laning phase can help you win and snowball your lane, especially against melee supports. More seeds means more damage, so getting to an objective 10-20 seconds ahead of time is crucial for establishing more control for the approaching team fight.

Core JJ establishes lane control with help of early seeds

Q: Deadly Spines

Zyra sprouts thorny vines at the target location dealing magic damage to enemies within the area.

Zyra's bread and butter damage skill, usually used in combination with her W, Rampant Growth. At level one, you should try to hit both your opponent and minion wave with your Q so you can help your AD with pushing that wave for the level two trade and lower your enemies HP bar.

W: Rampant Growth

Zyra plants 1 Seed at the target location, up to a maximum of 8 planted at any one time.

Remember, combining W with Q will spawn a Thorn Spitter and Vine Lasher will be created if you use E instead. Thorn Spitter has more range (750 compared to 400) than Vine Lasher.

E: Grasping Roots

Zyra sends a surge of vines in the target direction, dealing magic damage to enemies hit and Root icon rooting them for a short duration.

Zyra's main disengage and engage tool. Because Zyra's ultimate, Stranglethorns, has a lengthy cast animation, landing Grasping Roots is of major importance for CC locking multiple enemies. Grasping Roots has a faster casting animation than Deadly Spines, so it can be used for blocking incoming skillshots! All you have to do is put seed right in front of you and cast Grasping Roots.

R: Stranglethorns

Zyra summons a monstrous thicket at the target location, dealing magic damage to all enemies in the area as it expands. After 2 seconds, it knocks up all enemies for 1 second.

Plants within the Stranglethorns are enraged and deal 50% bonus damage, so your most optimal combo should be E into Q, then use all your W charges during Q's cast animation. Finish it off with your R.

Leveling Order

We start off game by putting points into Q>W>E respectively. Against botlanes that have trouble clearing our plants, we can put a 2nd point into W to give our plants more HP and make them more durable and annoying for our enemies to deal with.

We continue maxing Q during the laning phase, so that usually means we will have 3 points in Q before we switch to maxing E for team fights.

Items and Item Build Paths

These are most important items that you will want to have every game. However, that does not mean that other items won't get priority over them versus different team compositions. A good Zyra player will always adapt to the situation.

Core Items

Eye of the Watchers is superior to Ruby Sightstone + Frost Queen's Claim combination when we are talking strictly about Zyra. Other than providing additional item slot, Eye of the Watchers is allowing us to get our Liandry's Torment and Rylai's Crystal Scepter faster. While in the current meta most Ability Power supports prefer the other option, these are reasons why Zyra does not. Zyra, unlike Janna / Nami / Sona etc. gets to build bunch of damage items, so she does not need extra damage boost that Frost Queen's Claim provides compared to Eye of the Watchers. Further, Zyra doesn't have luxury of building protective support items with actives like Locket of the Iron Solari and Mikael's Crucible, so the extra 20% item CDR from Ruby Sightstone is wasted.

Mobility Boots vs Sorcerer's Shoes: Sorcerer's Shoes were considered a must buy for Zyra supports in the past, but players have turned to Mobility Boots recently. "Mobis" actually help us with movement speed, one of key problems for Zyra. Placing deep wards and roaming all over the map is very important both in Solo Queue and professional games.

Liandry's Torment and Rylai's Crystal Scepter synergize well with Zyra's plants and both reward long teamfights, the style of fighting in which Zyra excels. We get good amount of Ability Power and Health, 2 attributes that we really want to have on Zyra, in addition to on-hit effects for our plants that allow us to deal more damage and provide consistent slows for our team.

Situational Items

Morellonomicon is situational buy for Zyra support against champions with high regeneration (Dr. Mundo, Trundle) when you don't have any other AP carry that could buy it.

Zhonya's Hourglass and Abyssal Scepter are usual defensive items for Zyra. Ever since Hourglass' item path got changed it became even easier for Zyra to acquire it, since we don't have to sit on Needlessly Large Rod anymore. Building Abyssal Scepter is kind of suboptimal because as Zyra we don't want to be in middle of the fight, we want our plants to be in the middle of the fight doing damage while we are safe in the backline, which means that we don't gain the benefit from the aura that Abyssal Scepter provides, so sometimes is better to just have Negatron Cloak in your inventory so you don't get squashed by one rotation of AP Carries or to die from big AoE abilities.

While Rabadon's Deathcap is dream of every mage, it feels rather clunky to build it on Zyra, because we will need to " sit " on 1 or 2 components for large period of time, usually leaving us without pink ward slot. Also, having high Ability Power number isn't as high priority on Zyra as it is for other mages, we mostly buy items for their effects, survivability and magic penetration.

Survivability is most important. If we are not alive, we are not doing any damage or helping our carries deal with enemy frontline or assassins. Zyra is super squishy, so you will often find yourself dying just from one full combo of a burst mage or getting very low just from AoE damage from powerful ultimates in very late game. That's when an extra bit of Health and Magic Resist gets in handy.

Runes

Time to take our dusty tome and talk about rune choices. These are 2 most popular and effective rune pages for Zyra, one with extra focus on early game and one that is more well-rounded.

Offensive Page Defensive Page

Marks

Both rune pages use 9x Greater Mark of Magic Penetration (0.87 magic penetration).

Pretty standard choice for ranged AP supports. Zyra's spells and plants have high base damages so this choice is no-brainer.

Seals

Both rune pages use 9x Greater Seal of Health (8 HP).

Ever since armor seals got nerfed, health seals undisputedly best choice for support. As support, we are doing most of trading in the early game, especially first 3 to 4 levels. Coming out on top of early skirmishes for bush/wave control usually leads to having control over the entire lane, so Health seals are logical choice.

Glyphs

For a more early game oriented build we go 9x Greater Glyph of Magic Penetration (0.63 magic penetration).

Again, high base damage. While the usual choice of glyphs for AP supports are Ability Power ones, but magic penetration ones give more raw power in first few levels and that's what are we looking for, especially when facing helpless melee supports in first few levels. However, the safer choice is 9x Greater Glyph of Ability Power (1.2 ability power).

Quintessences

2x Greater Quintessence of Armor (4.26 armor).

1x Greater Quintessence of Magic Penetration (2.01 magic penetration) or 1x Greater Quintessence of Ability Power (4.95 ability power).

Two armor Quints give Zyra enough durability to avoid getting smashed from single CC rotation in 2v2 lane. They also synergize really well with the health seals. In more aggro rune pages, we are again going for magic penetration over raw ability power. While AP supports like Karma or Nami are taking Ability Power Quints, outside of Frost Queen's Claim and perhaps small amount of AP on Banner of Command, they don't have the luxury of building real Ability Power items like Zyra does, so that's one more thing to take into equation when weighting between ability power or magic penetration runes for Zyra.

Masteries

First we choose our keystone mastery. For AP casters, the choice is between Deathfire Touch and Thunderlord's Decree. Zyra's plants and spells combined with her long range auto attack make it extremely easy to activate Thunderlord's Decree bonus damage. Also, with Zyra we are not hitting super high AP numbers and our strength lies in DPS and not devastating high damage poke abilities, which is another reason to go with TLD.
In the Cunning tree we take usual support masteries: Wanderer, Secret Stash, Meditation and Bandit. The only difference is taking Precision over Intelligence for more of that sweet magic penetration that we love so much.

In the Resolve tree, we really want to get Insight for reduced CD on our summoners spells, especially Flash. You will find yourself fleeing from abilities and champions that you usually don't Flash from with other support picks, but with Zyra not only are we that squishy, we also don't have heals or shields and our CC is slow and avoidable.

Arguments can be made between taking Explorer and Tough Skin. Tough Skin is great in lanes that can match your early game prowess, like playing against a Caitlyn/Karma bot lane. Explorer gives us a bit more safety while roaming and warding.

Playing Team Fights

Most Zyra players get so corrupted by her high damage output, that they forget Zyra's main role in team fights is to cause disruption in enemy lines and to provide disengage and/or counter-engage. Damage is just nice extra thing that Zyra provides. Zyra shines against team comps that don't have hard engage or some kind of "wombo-combo" team fighting.

She excels versus classic tank and bruiser frontlines, slowing them and stopping them in their tracks while her backline deals damage or retreats without consequences.

Zyra as a Disengager:

We will take look at a team fight that occurred during Game 3 of Worlds Finals between Samsung and SK Telecom. Samsung gets caught with their pants down as they try to contest Elder Drake without any vision in the river. SKT start the fight with Nami's Tidal Wave and Jhin's Curtain Call followed by Trundle and Elise trying to get to SSG's Aurelion Sol and Ezreal, but well placed Stranglethorns together with plants empowered by Rylai's Crystal Scepter cuts off SKT's backline and stops them from chasing the low Samsung members.

Zyra as Counter-engager:

In same game 10 minutes later, the roles are reversed. SSG climbed their way back into game, and we have a team fight after SSG's Park "Ruler" Jae-hyuk manages to secure Baron. Samsung looks to retreat but another great Grasping Roots into Stranglethorns that knocks up 4 members of SKT allows Samsung to keep on fighting.

In both team fights, Core JJ is positioning between his frontline and backline. He knows he needs to be close enough to provide CC and damage, but far enough that he doesn't get blown up by Lee "Faker" Sang-hyeok's Orianna or caught in hard CC that SK Telecom had in game. He is constantly moving and weaving spells in, trying to maximize his damage output while being as safe as possible.

Final Thoughts

The fall of tank supports and rise of peel oriented mage supports, combined with nerfs that some engage junglers received, were enough for Queen of Thorns to awake and claim her rightful spot as ruler of support position. A new meta is evolving right now, with reworked Assassins and jungle changes. Will Zyra manage to hold her ground or is it time for comeback of Alistar, Braum and Tahm Kench? We will have to wait and see.

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