STOP. Before you continue, note that this is an AP Zyra guide for the MID lane. If you are looking for support Zyra, then this is NOT the guide for you.

OK, now that we've cleared any potential misunderstandings, Welcome to my AP Zyra guide!
xDanielWang here, you might know me from My Ahri guide on Mobafire! Now I'm back and ready to make a guide for my 2nd favorite Mid champion, Zyra!!!

A little about me


A little about Zyra
When Zyra was released, she was super over-powered as a mid laner. She had the best win-rate in the game, which led her to get nerfed several times. In the competitive scene, she has shifted mainly as a support champion, but I believe Zyra mid is still crazy good when played right.

Alright, now that you know some background, let's get started!

New masteries are really interesting. Basically, they made it so AP Mages aren't forced into the exact same 21 points every game. Now you actually need to decide which ones are more suited for you.

For masteries, I think this tree looks like a standard 21-0-9 AP Page.



Quick explanation on Individual Masteries




A possible defensive 21-9-0 tree:

Runes are pretty important. You do NOT want to be have wrong/no runes in ranked.

Recommended Greater Mark of Magic Penetration: Magic pen Reds are the standard marks for AP Casters. They help get rid of the enemies' pesky magic resistance and helps you do more damage. Everyone always builds MR runes so you might as well make them all useless.

Greater mark of hybrid penetration

Greater Mark of Hybrid Penetration: Hybrid Penetration Marks have seen some usage in high elo games. You sacrifice a bit of Magic Pen for a lot of Armor Pen. That Armor pen will make your early game auto attacks do more damage. You'll also last hit a bit better. Is it worth it for sacrificing a bit of MPen? I personally think so, but the choice is yours. Not a very beginner friendly choice, but really good if you can use them well.

Recommended Greater Seal of Armor: For some armor, pretty self-explanatory; Helps a lot for late-game. (although it's not as useful early game because you're most likely going up against an AP) These are ideal if laning against AD Casters mid.

Greater Seal of Mana Regeneration: Mana regen for more early game harass. I usually take these so I can use abilities more in the early game without being completely dependent on blue buff.

Greater Seal of Fortitude: For health which helps a bit for survivability; extra HP never hurts

Recommended: Greater Glyph of Ability Power Early to mid game Ability Power that is important for a strong early/mid game, where Zyra shines. Brings a lot of damage into your combo.

Greater Glyph of Scaling Ability Power: If you prefer more late-game AP, then scaling AP blues are for you. They give nearly 3x the amount of AP late game, but you could be at a disadvantage early game if the enemy laner is running flat AP.

Greater Glyph of Magic Resist: Good for laning phase to soften those pokes received

Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist: MR per level runes give slightly more MR at 18, if you feel you need more MR later

*Note - although the MR runes got nerfed a while ago, they are still a viable choice, just not as good as before.

Personally I take a hybrid of AP flat blues and AP scaling blues.

Greater Quintessence of Potency: Flat AP Quints are generally the best way to go for AP Mids. Increases your damage output, and when is that ever bad?

Flash and Ignite are your friends. You will (or should be) using these spells for almost all(99%) of your games.

Flash

Flash is SUPER important on Zyra. Zyra has NO escapes, so Flash is your life-line. Without it, if you get caught, you can Blink out and have a chance of living. Without Flash...you're dead and if you die, you set yourself and your team way behind. It's on a long cooldown though, so do your best to get caught as little as possible. In Pro games, EVERY champion will take Flash. that's how IMPORTANT it is for winning.
Note: If you have not unlocked Flash yet, then a proper replacement would be Ghost.

Ignite

will add that extra bit of damage to your burst and can make the difference from your enemy escaping with 15 health followed by a table flip, to a nice and solid kill.





These are worse than Flash or Ignite, but they're not as bad as some other summoners.

Barrier

This is okay if your enemy can burst you down instantly. Not recommended though generally, but fares well if against Veigar, LeBlanc, or other heavy bursters. It'll save your life a fair share of times. The defensive replacement of the offensive Ignite.

Teleport

Great for getting back to lane faster. Great for teleporting top or bottom lane and picking up a kill. It makes you weaker in lane though since you don't have Ignite.

Ghost

Only if your level isn't high enough for Flash; otherwise, Flash outclasses Ghost infinitely because you're not a melee initiator. Except for dominion. Ghost is better than Flash in dominion.




Inexperienced players might get these since it looks good on paper, but they're pretty bad on Zyra (or in general).





Summoner Spells that are plain wrong:

Zyra

Rise of the Thorns: I wouldn't call this a really good passive, but it has its moments. When you die, you turn into a plant, then shoot a missile (by pressing any spell) that does damage to everyone it hits. It travels kinda slowly though, so many people dodge it if they are ready to dodge it. That means in team fights, you want to wait a bit for the enemies to group up while the fighting occurs so you can surprise them (they won't have time to dodge while fighting your other teammates). NOTE: When you die, you can't fire the shot until 2 SECONDS have passed. So don't mash your buttons wondering why nothings firing then miss (like I used to do)

Deadly Bloom

Zyra

Deadly Bloom: This is your primary damage spell. When you use it, a circle appears and damages all enemies inside it. The range got nerfed a little bit, but it's still enough to do the job. There's a small cast time for the damage to occur, but the enemy shouldn't have that much time to react and dodge. When you walk up to use it though, watch out for any incoming spells your enemy mid laner could be using. A E+Q is enough to clear most waves mid-game. If you use deadly bloom on a Seed, the seed turns into a Thorn Spitter. I'll cover that in the next spell.

zyra

Rampant Growth: So I'll try to explain this as simply as possible. For starters, this spell gives up to 10% Cooldown Reduction, Yay! Now on to the exciting part of this spell: Using Rampant Growth, Zyra's W, drops a Seed down that lasts for 30 seconds or until an enemy steps on it (includes minions). The ability passively gives you seeds and you can store up to 2 and you can have 4 seeds on the map at a time (put 2 down, wait for 2 more, put them down for 4 total) If you put more than 4, the first one you put automatically disappears. Leveling it up gives seeds faster but max it last. Whenever you use your Q or E and the ability hits the seed, the seed instantly turns into a plant which attacks people. The plants will always focus the enemy that Zyra auto-attacks!!! This is very important to know when bursting enemies, you do NOT want your plants to be attacking minions while the enemy is snared. There are 2 types of plants, Thornspitter and vine lasher. Using Q on a seed turns it into Thornspitter and using E on a seed turns the seed into Vine Lasher. The plants are basically the same as each other except Thornspitter, (Q plant) has a slightly longer range and Vine Lasher (E plant) slows the enemy a bit. These plants are very important in your burst combo. Note that enemies can kill plants with auto-attacks and spells.

Kyou

Grasping Roots: Zyra's E, this is what makes her an amazing engager and disengager. You fire it in a line and it snares ALL ENEMIES in it. Yes, that means you can fire through a minion wave and hit the enemy laner behind all the minions. When you hit the enemy with the snare, you can drop a free Q on them, or even an Ult. If you hit like 3 enemies late game, you can become an engager by Comboing them down with your team and pretty much win for sure (if they're not crazy fed). If the enemy engages on your team, you can use this and stop them in their tracks so your team can disengage successfully. Grasping Roots also turns a seed into a Vine Lasher (see Rampant Growth ^ )

Fuji

Stranglethorns: Zyra's ult; it's n AoE knock-up that also deals tons of damage. When you place it down vines spread over a huge circle and damages all enemies on it. After 2 seconds, any enemy still on the circle gets knocked up for 1 second. Enemies can walk or flash out of it, but you can take care of that problem by using the ult on CC'ed enemies (likely from Grasping Roots. Also note that it makes any plants on top of it attack 50% faster. Try to have plants ready before you ult, but I wouldn't pass up a great Ult chance just for some plants.

The order you want to prioritize leveling your skills are as follows:

Stranglethorns

is your ult. You should always max ults first (exception being Janna maybe)

Deadly Bloom

This is your primary damage spell. It's on a lower Cooldown than Grasping Roots and deals more damage.

Grasping Roots

Next, max this out. Putting a point into it will do more damage and it will also increase the snare duration! It's also optional to alternate between maxing Q and E like QEQEQE if you feel like you need a longer snare earlier and you're willing to sacrifice some damage on Q.

Rampant Growth

Leveling this up will give a bit more Cooldown Reduction along with gaining seeds a bit faster. Putting a point into this is pretty good, just not as good as the other 2 damage dealing spells.


First few points:

Level 1. deadly bloom I usually start with Q for some level 1 harass. If you're invading though, Grasping Roots would be the better choice. It's not a bad idea to keep the point open until you get to lane. If you get attacked by the enemy team before minions spawn, you can put a point into E, snare them, and escape.
Level 2. Take Grasping Roots or [Deadly bloom]] if you didn't take it level 1.
Level 3. Take Rampant Growth to start being able to combo people.



Note: Additional and in-depth ability details can be found here http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Zyra

Since Zyra has plants and a snare, learning how to combo is really important, or you won't be doing that much damage. It could be confusing and it'll take some time to get used to them and knowing when to use each one, but practice makes perfect. You could probably find out all the combos yourself just by messing around with Zyra, but I'll list some. But first, you need to learn a super important Zyra mechanic that is absolutely crucial. If you know how to summon plants by dropping seeds after casting spells, then skip the spoiler:

Super Important Zyra Mechanic!
Summoning plants by dropping seeds AFTER you cast spells


Key:
Now that you're familiar with Seed comboing, I'll refer to QW as "Q with seed combo(summons thornspitter)" and EW as "E with seed combo(summons vine lasher"
> means next step.
QPlant = Thornspitter
EPlant = Vine Lasher
I'll also refer to all Zyra's moves by their button, Q, W, E, and R.

You'll want to hit ALL of these skills, or you'll combo will fail miserably. Hitting seeds are easy since they don't move, but most of the combos rely on hitting your E. You gotta hit E!!



The super simple harass combo is QW. It's a Q and it summons a surprise plant. Nothing else to it.
The same applies to the EW combo. But if you ended up hitting the snare on the EW combo, you can follow up with a QW to bring it to the next combo:

So the main/big combo I use is EW > QW > auto attacks.
The literal buttons in order are E>W>Q>W. This snares, creates a EPlant, deals Q damage, then creates a Q plant, all in less than a second. Why do I create 1 of each plant? Since the EPlant attacks slow the enemy, they'll escape slower while the QPlant attacks it with it's longer range! This combo maximizes damage output. Remember to keep auto-attacking so the plants will target the champion instead of the minion.
You can do this combo whenever you have 2 seeds and Q and E are off cooldown.
Use this combo when the enemy has a lot of hp, they won't be killed with an ult combo, and you just want to chunk down their health. It'll be hard to get a kill with this combo since enemies will leave lane when they get kinda low, but it does a lot of damage and sets up for the ult combo.
Honestly, making 1 of each plant doesn't really make that big of a difference. E>QWW is easier to do and does almost the same damage. Same with EWW>Q.

Ult Combo Main combo > R
This is the combo used to getting you kills in laning phase or for engaging late game. If you add your ult to the EW > QW combo from above, then it's the exact same, except ult immediately after the Q (but make sure you didn't miss your snare first!!). This will knock the enemy up so your plants can keep on dishing out damage along with the boosted +50% plant attack speed! This can kill an enemy that is already injured from smaller combos.

Teamfight ULT-First combo R>QW>EW
This is a team-fight centered combo in which you ult first. Why would you want to ult first? Well, something could happen where the enemy engages onto your team and you need to get your ult damage and knockup up asap. This forces the enemy to either back off and disengage, or, if they can't or choose not to, continue the engage, tank your ult damage and the knockup. If an enemy or multiple enemies gets knocked up, choose one (prioritize the back line) and use a QW combo right where they are about to land (the Q will hit them while they are still midair). As soon as they land, use a EW combo so they can't move for an ever longer time, and your teammates and your plants should be able to kill them no sweat. You lose out on the +50% plant attack speed bonus with this combo, but it's well worth it.


If you are going for a kill combo, Don't forget Ignite!! It adds a good chunk of damage to your combo and could be the difference between the enemy barely living and getting a kill.
You can mess around with the placements of your seeds(like QWW or EWW), and your own combos if you want.

The purchase order is not staple. Sometimes it will be better to get 1 item before another. You will learn the circumstances as you play more. But this is just a helpful guide to assist you :)

Aight, Here we go!

kyou

The most sensible Trinket for Zyra to start with is the Stealth Ward. It gives you a free (weaker) ward. Since starting flask+ward reduces the # of hp pots you can have by 2, this is a great way to have 3 pots and a ward. The Sweeping Lens isn't really helpful, since all it does is remove maybe a ward, but it has a higher cooldown. Scrying Orb is a long cooldown Clairvoyance, but I'd much rather have a free ward and not get killed by the jungler at level 3.

kyou

Ahri

I start with Crystalline Flask about 80% of my Zyra games. It gives an amazing amount of sustain throughout the game and allows for much more trading early game. If you get poked out without some health potions, you're going to lose alot of cs. If you can't afford to recall and be behind in gold and exp, then you don't want to be sitting at around 30% hp. Flask can help you keep your precious hp and mana bar in good condition. If you're planning on getting this, buy it at the start of the game. It's not worth it if you buy it in the middle of the game.

Kyou

kyou

Season 3 revolutionized the world of Boots. Boots now have 25 less move speed, but every champion now has 25 more move speed. What does this mean? Well, boots are now a whole lot less important. You can get away with delaying purchasing boots for longer. But most of the time, I still start out with Boots on Zyra because that 25 bonus move speed is crucial to dodging skillshots and are extremely important against champs like Karthus, Cassiopeia, or Brand. It also plays a huge part in escaping early ganks. Also, starting Boots allows me to also start with 4 Health Potions for sustainability (not as much sustainability as flask though).

zyra

zyra

Doran's Ring was changed in Season 3, albeit slightly. Personally, I think it's on the same level as the Doran's Ring in Season 2. I usually get Doran's Ring for mana regen, since it's cheap and I usually don't build any other mana regen items. Get a Doran's Ring under these conditions: You want early game mana regen. (And not planning on going Chalice) You are facing a very hard match-up. You are losing your lane and want to get back in the game. You are stomping your lane and want to stomp it even more. Getting a ring will make you a lot stronger when you buy it, but since there's no upgrades, you need to sell it later and get better items. Don't just buy a ring whenever, since in the end, you will lose gold. Edit: Now that Doran's Ring is only 400 gold, it is a viable choice to start with a ring and two Health Potions. Note: If you buy a Doran's Ring, you need to make it count. Make it worth the 400 gold you dumped into it. If the enemy doesn't buy one and you break even, you end up losing money.

zyra

Go for these on MOST GAMES: (Shoes, Athene's , Rabadon, Zhonya)

Zyra

Generally I get Sorcerer's Shoes for that Magic Penetration, but if I'm laning against someone with high burst and cc such as Veigar or LeBlanc, Mercury's Treads are a must-have.

Zyra

[Ahri]

Although you could play Zyra as a burst mage, I usually don't (although it could be better, who knows). Athene's Unholt Grail provides basically unlimited mana for you to keep on attacking the enemy with your spells as soon as they are up. Athene's doesn't give much AP, but you make up for the smaller damage by continuously hitting them with spells without having to worry much about Mana. A big part of Athene's is that it gives a lot of Magic Resist to provide a bit of resist against the enemy AP laner. This is really important and keeps you alive more. It also provides 20% CDR, so with Athene's, Masteries, and your W, you'll be at 35% CDR, pretty much at max CDR (max is 40%). If you get Blue Buff, you'll be 5% over the Cap, but that's nothing to be completely devastated about. Do NOT build this item if you are laning against an AD Champion. The Magic Resist will be worthless. Get Zhonya's instead.

Ahri

It's really, really expensive, but once you build this sucker, your damage will send the enemy running as soon as they see you. It gives a TON of AP and AP = tons of damage. If all goes well, you will have this around 17-20 minutes. This is arguably one of the best AP items in the game and your enemies won't have that much magic resistance yet. This adds soooo much damage to your spells, and you'll want to try for this every game. Note If you find yourself losing your lane, this might not be the best choice to buy. Instead buy a Rylai's Crystal Scepter since that will provide more utility for your team. Rabadon's Deathcap is an item for people who are generally doing well in lane.

Zyra

Ahri

This item is amazing on AP Casters, but it's crucial on Zyra. Remember how I said Zyra doesn't have many escapes? After, Flash, this is your second life-line. When you use it, you'll be frozen, but you'll also be completely invincible for about 2 seconds. When you use your combo in fights the enemies will want to kill you asap since you're a Carry, but you're a sitting duck since all your spells will be on cooldown. After you use Zhonya's, you'll be an invincible sitting duck and the enemies will have no choice but to either switch focus on your teammates (and get pelted by a second wave of your spells after they get off cooldown) or sit there waiting to kill you (while they get killed by your teammates). Don't get it too early though, since the armor is a lot better for late game than early game as your enemy will most likely be doing magic damage. The active alone counters the kits of so many champions. A simple click of the active will make numerous painful ults such as Karthus's Requiem, Brand's Pyroclasm, Fizz's Chum the Waters, Caitlyn's Ace in the Hole fizzle out and become useless. It's quite the item, completely necessary. YES, GET THIS ITEM EVEN IF THE ENEMY MID IS AP.

Zyra

[Ahri]

As the 3rd biggest damage item (after DFG and Deathcap), Void Staff is the next big hitter. This item is exceptionally good for when the enemy is stacking a bunch of Magic Resist. Magic Penetration is pretty tough to come by as an AP casterand Void Staff is your 1-way ticket to shredding the enemies Magic Resistance. The more MR the enemy team has, the more cost efficient this item is. It's also a relatively cheap item. I ususally get this late game, since that's when % Magic Penetration really becomes useful. (Flat MPen is more useful early game)

Zyra

Go for these MOST games. The items that appear first here are the items I would get more often.

Ahri

A Rylai's Crystal Scepter works ok on Zyra. It's big selling point is that it adds a slow onto your spells, but one of Zyra's spells don't do damage and another one automatically Snares them. This makes Q (and your plants) the only things that can use the slow, unless you also count ult. I really like getting this though, since it gives a ton of HP so I don't get killed in like 1 hit from anything every time. It also gives some pretty good AP and synergizes* with Liandry's.

[zyra]

[zyra]

This gives you a health boost, which is also nice to have, along with some decent ability power. It also gives really nice Magic Penetration, and if you get one early along with Sorcerer's Shoes, then early game, you'll basically be doing true damage. That's just crazy. Haunting Guise was considered an early game item in Season 2 because you couldn't upgrade it into anything and had to sell it to get something better. But in Season 3, you can upgrade it to...

[zyra]

[Zyra]

It builds from Haunting Guise. That makes Haunting Guise a good item since you don't have to sell it anymore. It gives health for some tankiness. It gives Magic Pen which is really good for dealing nice damage. It gives a sweet passive that will help shred the hp on tanks. You get bonus shredding if you have a Rylai's also, for some sick synergy. What makes this item really good on Zyra, is that her plants also trigger the passive. Yes, HER PLANTS will trigger the passive. That means you can summon a plant to attack some enemies and use spells on others and now everyone's getting burned!

[zyra]

These items are situational. Get them when the situation arises. Like, get more MR items if they are an early-game burst mage. Or get spell vamp if you're against a sustainer. I rarely get these unless I really have to.

[Zyra]

This item is mandatory on AP assassins. However, I don't really consider Zyra an assassin since she doesn't really have any gap closers to get close to the enemy. But if you want to add a huge burst when you snare someone, you can get this item. Replace Athene's Unholy Grail with DFG if you want to get this item. You'll be way over the CDR cap and Athene's doesn't really work great with a full assassin build.

[zyra]

The main selling point of this item is for the sustained DPS with your auto-attacks whenever you use spells. It's great for champions that have moves that are based on their autos (tf) or champions that have many melee attacks in their combo (fizz). Unfortunately, that's not how you should be playing Zyra. You can get pretty much 1 Lich Bane attack off per combo, but in my opinion, there's better items for Zyra out there.

[Ahri]

This item got reworked in Season 3. A passive replaced the active, so it's kinda easier to use. But it's only effective against champs with super high hp regen. Get it if you are facing some freakish enemy combination of Sion, Dr. Mundo, and Vladimir or something. It kinda works as a blue buff, but it costs a lot of money. I don't recommend it, unless really specific circumstances.

[Ahri]

Provides you with a lot of Magic Resistance and a nice chunk of Ability Power. The Magic Resistance will heavily reduce the damage from your enemy and it will give you some nice tankiness, especially for early game.The aura is super nice and reduces the Magic Resistance of nearby enemies by 20. Very viable on Zyra and consider starting to BUILD it early if facing a super burst enemy mid. Highly Recommended. If you're going to get this, get it early. (Rush it, skip Doran's Ring)

[Ahri]

This is a really cheap item and an amazing active. Removes all CC from you which could save your life. This will cancel crowd control, even suppresses, from various ults such as Warwick's Infinite Duress, Malzahar's Nether Grasp, Skarner's Impale, Amumu's Curse of the Sad Mummy and basically any other crazy cc that people find annoying. If you buy it, just make sure you use it! Don't build this too early. You can buy an early Negatron Cloak for early game MR, but you don't need to buy it early unless you're facing a Warwick jungler, Malzahar mid, or anyone else with very dangerous abilities mid. (Example: don't rush this early if there is an enemy Urgot bottom lane, you're rarely going to see him until late/mid game.) The main downside is that you don't get any damage out of it.

[Ahri]

Pick this up if the enemy has scary AP damage. Banshee's Veil provides some nice Magic Resist, mana, but the main reason for getting this is to block a spell every 25 seconds. A lot of CC spells are skillshots, and this could stop you from getting caught by a Lux Binding or a Veigar Stun. If you see an enemy with a Banshee's Veil's passive on (a blue circle around them), toss out some Q's and plants to see if you can get rid of it. Banshee's will block your Grasping Roots so don't lead with it against a Veiled enemy.

[Ahri]

Provides a blend of Armor and Magic Resistance. It's useful if no one on the enemy team is extremely fed, and everyone on their team is about even. Also, it revives you, so you can do a bunch of damage, die, come back, and do more damage. It's good for the people starting out because it's a good replacement for people who have trouble remembering to use their Zhonya's Hourglass or Quicksilver Sash's actives. However, it's still vital to learn to use those actives, so try to refrain from buying Guardian Angel every game if possible.

[Ahri]

It's not a completely terribly item on Zyra, but there's just so many better things you can spend your hard-earned cash on. The main reason is that a big focus of this item is that sacrifices a ton of Damage for some health and mana. If you have mana problems, get a Chalice. If you have Hp problems, get a Rylai's. It also takes 10 minutes for you to get your money's worth of AP, what's up with that. If you really want to be tankier with more HP, then I guess you can buy it. But if you go Athene's, Rod of Ages, and Rylai's your damage will be really puny.

Coming soon.

I'm sorry that it's not up yet, it takes an insane amount of time to code the matchups section. It's in the works, but I don't want to rush it, then have to re-code everything all over again. I'll try to get it up and running in the future.

If you really want to know what a champion in mid does and what their threats are, you can look at the matchups section on my Ahri guide.

Early Game - Farm and Trade Damage

Note: I refer to a lot of combos by names that are nowhere near official. If you need a reminder on what combo is which, just re-view the combo section.

Okay, the game starts up. First of all, you probably need to leash your jungler. This means that you should watch over the buff area to prevent any invades. Due to jungle changes, the top or bot lane should be doing the most damage to the golem/lizard soyou don't really have to help the jungler any more, but if you feel nice you can auto attack it a bit or use a spell.

Now you stroll back to your lane, which most likely is mid. This means last hitting. Don't constantly auto attack the minions. Auto attacking will push your lane outwards, and you will be forced to be closer to their turret in order to continue last hitting. The enemy jungler can stroll behind you, and you'll probably die from an deserved gank. Also, a pushed lane will mean that your jungler cannot gank from your side. Double-lose.

Feel free to push hard if they don't have a jungler, or if the game is approaching mid game. And use your small combos for harassing since it does quite a chunk of damage to them. Getting the enemy low enough with your small combos or main combos sets up for a early kill for your main combo or ult combo.

Spamming combos out will drain your mana fast, but that's why I get Chalice. It's still a good idea to do your best at hitting them with the combos though.

Keep on harassing them. Try to keep their health low. You need to play Zyra a whole lot, but eventually you will be able to tell when a Ult combo will be able to secure the kill. It's not worth it if they still survive since now you don't have ignite and much less mana. Overall, I can't stress how important it is to obtain every creep score. Take a look at this creep score calculator http://mullinator.com/tools/cscore?c=54&t=10.0&p=50. If you get only 50% of the Creeps at 10 minutes, you're down 1100 gold you could have had. That's a whole Blasting Wand and Boots! You'd be sooo much stronger if you had more CS.

It is very important to note that pre-6 might be the only time you can press your advantage against certain champs. If the enemy is an Akali, Veigar, Kassadin, or any melee champion, do whatever you can to totally ruin their laning phase. Seriously, I mean it. If you let these guys farm freely, once they turn 6, you're going to be in a whole world of hurt.

Mid Game - Roam and Destroy

Now you've hit level 6. Your ult combo is available. Hopefully your laning opponent will have somewhat medium-ish health by now (given that you haven't already killed him/her yet). This takes many Zyra games worth of experience, but you should be able to tell if you can kill the enemy laner with one huge ult combo.

People that are not familiar with Zyra will not know how high your kill potential is at 6. This is your chance.

When you both hit 6, your laning opponent could possibly be either much stronger than you, or weaker than you. If he/she is now stronger than you, you need to focus on helping your other lanes get kills. It will help your team much more than getting constantly wrecked by your laning opponent.

The odds are, for the majority of low-elo or normal games, wards are not as frequently used as they should be (not even trinket helps that much). Top lane should be vulnerable for an easy kill is it's unwarded, so ask your top if the enemy has laid a Stealth Ward). If you want to gank bot, go through your jungle if you are Blue team, or go through the enemy jungle if you are Purple team. Keep on ganking.

If NOTHING is gankable or you think the enemy laner will push your turret too fast, then stay in mid and insta-clear the wave. Then you can go and take your wraiths or wolves if your jungler isn't mad about it.

You want to ensure that your lanes end up winning, so your AD carry, such as Vayne or Graves can demolish everyone in team fights. Zyra is unbelievably good at small skirmishes (3v2's or 3v3's that happen often bot lane during a gank), and you should have a pretty nice score by now. If you happen to fall too many levels behind your team (i.e. 2 or 3), farm in a safe spot that will not get you ganked by the opponent. The last thing you want to do is die more. Getting more gold will put you back into the game.

Late Game - Teamfight to Victory

In Teamfights, you need to be in a safe spot since you're incredibly squishy.
Generally you want to just spam out everything during the huge teamfights using combos whenever you can. Your options are either to

1. Try your best to get to and combo the enemy ADC without dying and kill him
or
2. Stick with your ADC and protect them with your snare and ult. Dish out DPS to anyone within range.

However, if you completely dominated up to this point, then your damage should be nothing to sneeze at. It could be completely possible to insta-gib the enemy AP or AD carry with 1 combo. You need to catch them out of position though, as even if you do tons of damage, a simple stun can totally get you killed instantly. Your tanks are going to try their best to protect you. Running into the enemy team to initiate on the enemy ADC is basically suicide, and yes, you will lose.

Hopefully, the other members of your team should be pretty strong due to your crazy score during midgame, and you should win. Note that initiating a fight by landing a Grasping Roots then comboing him to death, not the tank, will almost ensure that your team will win that fight or score at least one kill as long as everyone is paying attention and focusing the right target.

Buy Wards. They will save your life many times. Ward the enemy wraith camp and the bushes by mid if you can; not the long ones right next to you - the small circular ones in the river; they provide vision of the enemy coming from either lane and cover vision on the small area from the C shaped bushes to the bushes on the side of mid lane. Pick up wards if you have spare cash when you recall.

• The combo section is one huge tip and trick. Comboing does wonders and is necessary on any good Zyra player.
• As soon as you place a seed down, it gives a brief moment of vision wherever you placed it. This is GREAT if you're unsure whether an enemy is in it and you don't want to waste a whole ward.
• Whenever you kill one of Yorick's ghouls, you gain +1 extra gold than normal. He also gets +1 gold whenever he kills one of your plants. This little easter egg is a reference to Plants vs. Zombies.
• You can have 4 seeds on the field. That means if your team wants to dragon or baron, you can put 2 seeds down in front of it, wait a bit, then drop more seeds for up to 4 plants to deal damage and soak up damage.
• If you and your team are pushing an enemy tower and you don't have minions nearby, you can summon some plants to help tank a tower shot. Better the plants take the hit than your teammates!
• 15 cs = 1 champ kill. That's just 2-3 waves. For laning phase, you need to last hit. Seriously, man. It's impossible to stress enough how much creep score matters.
• If it's mid-game and you want to gank, push the minion line to your opponent's turret, and step back so he can't see you. When the minions come back, step back in and push the minions to the enemy turret again. Step back. Repeat this several times. Eventually he will stop calling MIA's to his team, and you can go gank a lane easily. If you've pushed your lane hard, you might as well mess with his head. It will be harder for him to last hit under a turret, and by stepping back, you are also protecting yourself from enemy jungler ganks.
• Try to harass enemies with auto attacks in early levels as much as possible. Just be sure to account for minion aggro since they will start attacking you as soon as you do damage to the enemy. They do a surprising amount of damage to you at early levels.
• Are you getting tower-dived? Grasping Roots them under the turret and watch them cry.
  
  

Thanks for viewing my guide! I hope that you found it helpful!

I am completely open to constructive criticism and I encourage you to give me your opinions on my guide.

I try my best to respond to all questions in the comments section and even PMs.


Feel free to check out My Ahri guide!!

An upvote or +rep is always appreciated!


I made a Mobafire blog that shares my thoughts on Ahri's state and Zyra's state (nerfs&patch changes) along with any other ramblings on my mind. You're welcome to check it out if you want Mobafire Blog



For Super hard-core fans (non lol-related...idk)
Follow me on:
Twitter
Tumblr
Osu Profile





Thanks so much for reading my guide! I hope it helped you out at least a little :D Keep on being awesome and remember: Losing a match will improve your skill more than winning a match.