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Zyra Build Guide by

A very serious guide to Zyra jungle very detailed yes

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Zyra Build Guide By Updated on

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Runes: Standard Runes; Good Scaling

1 2 3

Domination

Dark Harvest

Cheap Shot

Eyeball Collection

Ravenous Hunter

Sorcery

Nimbus Cloak

Gathering Storm

Bonus:

+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+6 Armor

Spells:

Blue-Smite

Chilling Smite

Flash

Items

Starting Items

Early Items

Core

Synergy With Zyra's Kit

Other AP Items

Example Full Build

Ability Order

Zyra Passive Ability

Threats & Synergies

Threats

Synergies

Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny

Show All

None Low Ok Strong Ideal

Extreme Threats

Ideal Synergies

Lee Sin

Extreme

Most mage-junglers and mages in general struggle against Lee Sin, but with Zyra being very vulnerable to invades early, Lee Sin can just permanently put pressure on you. Rush Seeker's, play is safe and pick the Inspiration setup to compensate for the gold-deficite and get a cheap Zho to go for plays when Lee is not around. If you see him, do not use your E unless he is currently dashing towards you. Be careful, because good Lee Sins can outplay that as well.

Zyra

Ideal

I only listed notable champions or examples of ok champions here. General criteria for champions Zyra works well with: Good gank-setup, does not have to force plays early, enough damage to onehot together with Zyra's burst, special synergy, ...

Synergies

Ideal Strong Ok Low None

Zyra

Ideal

Champion Build Guide

Video: A very serious guide to Zyra jungle

This is an in depth add on to this video-guide:(unknown embed type)
Sike I haven't made it yet.

Introduction

Hi, my name is Sq,

I run a small Youtube-channel for fun on which I also upload short video guides on off-meta picks. I'm eventually gonna upload a guide to this pick to introduce this in-depth-guide in a more humorous way.

I am not very good at the game, so take all of this with a grain of salt, but I did put a lot of thought into this idea, so please give it a shot.

Why Zyra jungle?

-jungle is a flex-pick. Nobody will be expecting the to go into the jungle if she is drafted early. You may also swap bans with your support to make the illusion even more convincing.

does have her weaknesses like being immobile and having low damage in the earlygame, but other than that she is a really well rounded jungler, with destinct strenghts that set her apart from other AP-junglers like or .

Also probably the most important reason for playing jungle (or any champion for that matter) is that she is just fun. If you didn't like playing Zyra, you probably wouldn't even have found this guide in the first place. League is still a game and it's always important to have fun and play champions you like. I personally have a lot of fun theorycrafting and playing off-meta build and I get really excited, if manage to execute the pick, which is why I make these guides in the first place.

Pros & Cons

Pros:
- Decent clear
- Brings Hard-CC to ganks
- Scales well
- good burst and catch potential

Cons:
- Vulnerable to invades
- Weak damage early
- Weak clear pre-Liandry's
- Squishy

Playstyle

Zyra is played like a normal jungler. You gank, look for objectives, farm camps. That's basically what you do. Zyra has a decent clear, especially after completing Liandry's Torment, so she can farm pretty well when she has nothing else to do.

Really early Zyra doesn't have as much pressure, clearspeed and damage though. You will try to work towards your core items ( Liandry's Torment and Mobility Boots) as fast as possible. You become way stronger and can now move around the map, clear fast and dish out damage.

Ganking:

When ganking, connecting your E is really important. Try baiting out dashes or defensive abilities using AAs or even a Q and get yourself into a good position to hit your E (walking up). Since your E is really slow, you want to try and confirm it off of ally-hard- and soft-CC (or Chilling Smite).
Depending on the strenght of your laner's gank-setup, you want to either get 2 Thorn Spitters (Q) or 1 Thorn Spitter (Q) and Vine Lasher (E) each (e.g. when ganking with a mega- Gnar, you can create a CC-chain with his hard-CC and spawn 2 Thorn Spitters (Q), since enemies are gonne have a hard time getting out of plant-impact-range anyways).

Strengths/Powerspikes

is very powerspike-reliant and she needs to play around them. Early she is rather weak, but as soon as she gets her hands on a , she becomes a really strong champion with a lot of damage and a good clear. After completing it you really get to make plays and go for teamfights and catches.

is not only incredibly cheap (especially with the -rune-setup), but also has great synergy with Zyra's kit. Upgrading it's three components doesn't make you that much stronger, but if you think about it that way you get 10 AP and a recastable for 50 gold.

Both of her boots-options offer great value to . While you want to complete your , before upgrading your , should be bought before completing , since they're slightly more effective before that (pen-stacking). They will grant you decent damage in early fights. are really valuable for , since they give her way more map-pressure.

Jungle Clear

Plant-Tanking:

You plants can tank camp-aggro. Large monsters like buffs or Crimson Raptor will deal 1/4 of the plant's HP per AA, while small jungle monsters like small wolves will deal 1/8 of the plant's HP per AA. How long plants can tank highly depends on the camp. While they survive merely one second vs raptors, they can tank redbuff for 8 seconds before they despawn.

Clearing the 1st camp most effectively:

Stand in a brush and leave it to time a plant-spawn anywhere between 0:48 and 0:51. From there just stand inside the buff-pit. You should have three sets of seeds to work with as the buff spawns. Mistiming the spawn will result in either one set despawning or one other set spawning too late. You will want a leash, since Zyra's lvl-1-clear is really good for the first 8 seconds and really bad after that.

As Zyra you have three options for your 1st-clear. You can 5-camp, fullclear and cheese-clear and with my mediocre jungle-knowledge I'm gonna go over all of these to the best of my ability.

4/5-Camp:

Redbuff - Raptors - Wolves - Bluebuff (- Gromp) - Crab
This clear is gonna be your go-to clear in most games. You don't clear Krugs, since they are rather slow to clear early. With this clear you want to arrive at scuttle-crab as it spawns. You normally have enough time for that and if you don't get bad RNG, you even have time to clear gromp. After clearing bluebuff and getting lvl 3, clearing gromp and crab will give you lvl 4.
This is a pretty fast clear to contest crabs and avoid invades. You also have the option to quickly gank toplane after clearing bluebuff.

Fullclear:

Redbuff - Krugs - Raptors - Wolves - Bluebuff - Gromp
It's the classic fullclear that you see from farming junglers, junglers with a fast clear or junglers with a weak earlygame. Zyra's relatively weak earlygame and reliance on her mythic to clear camps make this clear really appealing. It does have some downsides though in that it's really slow and it leaves you vulnerable to invades, since you take a long time clearing krugs. If you are ever left without a leash though, it is probably better to just fullclear, since you won't be reaching your blueside and crab in time anyways. Assuming you don't get invaded, you should hit lvl 4 upon clearing gromp.

Cheese-Clear:

Redbuff - Wolves - Bluebuff (or other way around)
The classic 3-camp-clear is a cheese-strategy to snowball the game with a quick, early sidelane-gank. If you plan to execute this, you will wanna take with snowballey runes, so you actually deal damage early and are able to snowball off of ganks. This is normally not recommended though, since Zyra's clear is rather mediocre before she gets her , which is why she wants to clear as many camps during 1st-clear as possible.

Clear-tips for indivisual camps:

Both redbuff and bluebuff are really easy to plant-tank, since they attack incredibly slowly. A single plant can tank a redbuff for the whole 8 seconds of it's duration. Redbuff is really easy to clear and the buff gives you HP5 in case you do have to tank some camps. It makes clearing these camps a lot healthier.

Bluebuff is also really easy to plant-tank, but getting it to aggro your plants instead of you once it has aggro on you is (for SOME reason) more difficult than on red. If that happens though, you can just tank it. Since your clear is generally really healthy, you should be fine. The buff speeds up your clear by a lot, since it reduces the cooldown on your Q, which is your main damage-spell.

Early and with lvl 2 Krugs are really slow to clear. Later in the game though, especially after completing Liandry's, they are really easy and quick to clear. You can walk away from the camp really early and let your plants finish off the middle and amall krugs and.

Since gromp attacks pretty slowly, plants can also tank it for a relatively long time. It's heal and mana-regeneration upon clearing it makes the 5-camp clear really appealing, since you get to be almost full-HP arriving at crab.

Always try to hit your Q and E on as many raptors as possible. Your plansts aren't gonna do much, since there's 6 raptors and all of them attack really fast. However you do get a lot of cooldown refund on your W by killing all 6 raptors.

Wolves are by far the easiest camp to clear for Zyra. It's a multi-camp, so you get multiple refunds on your W, but they also attack slowly enough to let plants live way longer than raptors would. On your 1st clear you probably also have previously cleared Raptors, so you should have 2 W-stacks up to place on the camp.

In your normal clear, which plant you chose doesn't matter, since they all do the same damage. You normally prefer Thorn Spitters (from Q), since they are almost always in range to attack the buff, but when clearing crab, you want to place at least one Vine Leasher (from E), so the crab has a harder time getting out of plant, range. The crab will also never run from the plants, so placing plants in front of the crab is a good way of ensuring max-value out of plants.

Camp-images were taken from this guide.

Itemization

Chilling Smite is generally better for mages and expecially Zyra, since she can use it to land her E and combo it with Nimbus Cloak to get away and survive sticky situations.

Your first back is gonna be aimed at getting either of these items. Both grant you AP and Haste, with being way cheaper and having the regeneration-passive. The passive doesn't do much in the jungle, but if you can afford to get a Chapter, you should buy it over Codex, since it gives you more AP and leaves a way cheaper item left in your build-path.

You can also pick up tier-1- or even a on your first-back. If you want to snowball with , is never a bad option.
Instead of Codex or Chapter, you can also pick up a , to stack it early and have better safety vs invades from AD-junglers. The same goes for , but with AP obviously.

You want to pick up tier-1- early, but you generally want to upgrade them rather late, since you want to work towards completing as fast as possible.
You generally buy , since is rather slow, but if you are ahead and can snowball, consider buying before your . They boost up your damage by a lot, especially in the earlygame.

is your mythic and core item, which you want to work towards as fast as possible. It drastically increases your damage and clearspeed and gives you mana to work with outside of the jungle. The burn synergizes really well with 's kit.

If you have nothing else to buy, just buy . It is just a good item for Zyra, because it synergizes very well with her plants and your mythic . It gives relative safety in fights, because of the HP and resistances it gives, but is mainly build for the damage-part of it's passive.
If you need to complete a or first, just build later.

If xou are ahead is a great item to push your advantage. It has great synergy with Zyra's plants, because they apply the slow with every one of their attacks. It makes it harder for enemies to escape your R or general plant-impact-range. If you are at risk of being dove, the HP and slow help you kite and survive a potential diver.

Defensive items like and are great options on Zyra. Zho is generally always among the most powerful AP-items in the game and Banshee's is a great option to build vs AP as an AP-jungler. 's plants also keep firing, when she is in stasis, which enables a lot of plays and riskier engages.

is a great item in general right now and Zyra is able to utilize just as well as any other mage could. If they have 2-3 tanks and/or enemy mages/fighters start building MR, you always want to build a , because it's incredibly cheap and the %-MR-pen carries a lot of value.
If you just need damage in general, you can either buy a or . Which one of these you buy is up to personal preference, since they are both very similar and work equally well with 's kit.

is your go-to grevious wounds item and is fine on paper, however it's not really cost efficient. Unless the enemy team has a lot of lifesteal or multiple champions like , who rely on healing, it's never worth to buy Morello. Since there is currently a lot of healing in the game, scenarios where is worth the buy are much more common than they would be otherwise.

Runes

Primary Runes/Keystones:

has great synergy eith Zyra's kit, because it complements her good scaling and can easily be collected by plants without even hitting abilities on them. It's incredibly strong in teamfights, because of that.
is used to deal burst damage to single targets even in the early game. It can compensate for your lack of early damage and help you snowball games and catch out single targets lategame.

You don't have a way to proc , you don't proc much as a jungler. You have a hard-CC-combo and that's why you take . Not more to it.

Wether you take or is up to your playstyle this game. Both runes let you snowball and scale decently, and neither is very consistent. is the safer one of the two, since you will have collected all eyeballs at one point or another. requires a more active approach and being able to play forward making it weaker if you fall behind.

is another rune just for the stats. Your high damage in teamfights will have this rune carry a lot of value in case you do take chip-damage or are being dove. Picking , you drop the omnivamp in favor of more map-pressure and the option to swap out for , while still moving around the map rather quickly.

Secondary Runes:

I really like on many junglers in general. is normally really immobile, which makes it hard for her to play risky and get away with it. together with can actually get out of a lot of sticky situations and adds a lot of needed safety to her kit.

is a great scaling rune. It scales infinitely and outshines almost all other runes after a certain point in time. That certain point in time however is about 20 or 30 minutes into the game. Before that many other runes are just more effective. is way more effective than in the earlygame and should mostly be prioritized if you plan to snowball early.

This rune is considered in combination with :
When taking as your secondary tree, you lose out on the safety of . This can be a pretty hard hit, considering being immobile. To circumvent that, you can take to not have to spend 650 gold on a for added safety. Combined with , you are able to purchase a with about 2100 gold.

is a very situational rune. already relies a lot on her powerspikes, but in games where the difference between and + + can make the difference, having this rune can be way worth it. Generally you can buy your legendary items just a bit earlier and you want to use that andvantage to get ahead and snowball the game.

Example Setup: Scaling:

This page complements 's strong scaling power with safe scaling runes like . If you get ahead with this setup, you gain the benefits of and way faster, which makes this rune also really good, if you get to snowball. gives you good sustain against potential chip damage you take in fights, since you'll be dealing a lot of damage in fights.

Example Setup: Snowball:

This page trades the reliable and easy-to-get-on scaling runes like and for runes like and , which encourage and rewards agressive play in the early game. It also leaves the very good scaling and teamfight-power of behind in favor of really good early damage with .

Conclusion