Hello Summoners! I'm Growlerthl, a silver-rated NA player with extensive ranked solo queue experience in the lower ELOs these past two seasons. I started playing League of Legends just before the Quinn patch at the start of S3, and started my adventures in ranked sometime around Aatrox's release. I mained Zyra mid through a large part of my early days playing ranked, and started supporting with her in solo queue around the season's end.

Zyra's optimal support build has changed dramatically since season 3 (even since preseason). Due to the vision and warding changes this season and tweaks to Zyra's numbers, she is much better suited to bot than midlane in S4. Furthermore, Zyra is currently one of the most powerful supports and the highest winrate solo queue champions in the game. Lolking it.

Pros

-Counters all the broken supports: Thresh, Leona, Morgana, and Braum.
-Gives literally double the map vision of any other support in the game right now (Discounting Teemo)
-Hard to counter
-Pretty safe pick
-Early game burst and harass potential is matched only by support Annie's.
-Very Spammable
-Potent kill combo
-When ADC has to back and leaves you to hold lane, you can hold lane like a beast
-When you're the only one alive versus a five man turret siege, you can hold lane like a beast
-If ADC dies early in a 2v2, often you can ACTUALLY clean up and get a double kill instead of having to look worthless, run away and get flamed.
-Most enemy supports can't trade with you
-A lot of enemy ADCs can't trade with you
-A lot of enemy junglers can't gank you
-Your burst can make a lot more enemy junglers wish they hadn't tried to gank you.
-Easy to learn

Cons

-If your team needs any approximation of a tank support, let alone a hulking Leona/Thresh-like wall of meat to dive under a turret, take twenty tower shots and raise nine hells' worth of crowd control to set up the ADC for a penta, you picked the wrong champion.
-If for any reason you need a champion who requires no skill to land CC [read: Sona], (e.g. you're laning against Corki+Taric and they have a Lee Sin who can actually ward jump around your slow-*** vines and dragon kick your ADC into the waiting maw of your murderous enemy botlane,) you picked the wrong champion.
-Base Movespeed is garbage
-Has a lot of skill matchups- e.g. Janna and Nami- where the best player wins and champion pick factors in very little.
-Pretty intricate, sometimes disintuitive champion with a lot of tricks and quirks; tricky gain any smidgeon of mastery

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All in All

Zyra offers a hell of a lot to any botlane and any team. She can poke and zone nearly enemy botlane enough to keep farmers like Vayne and Kog'Maw happily plinking away until they're 1v5 God Mode. She can set up excellent double kills for sleazy early bursters like Draven and Twitch. And paired with a long range sniper like Varus or Caitlyn, Zyra zones so hard she can almost pin the enemy botlane back under their turret while the creeps are frozen on her team's side of the river. She provides spectacular peel for carries who are in trouble, and once she has some AP her own damage output isn't too shabby, either.

Zyra's long been one of my favorite champions in the game, and is now my default support pick. Hopefully this guide will help you enjoy playing her as much as I do in the botlane and kick some ***!