Absolutely loved this guide. I was regularly an AP mid zyra and was alright, but always tended to get more assists than kills. I looked at this guide and straight away it was the only decent one i could find that had a detailed support outline. My first 3 games i play switching to support we finish all of the games in under 20 minutes and the ADC and i push through to inhibs before mid has even gotten a turret. Her root is possibly the greatest burst damage in assistance with an ADC. W,E,W,Q along with rylai's almost gurantees a kill if the adc is competent and they dont use flash. And also that ult. Oh my word. I thought it was good as a mid, but as soon as you hit 6 and get pesky ganks by their jungler, boom, ulti all three near the turret, and they can't do anything about it. Almost guarantees winning lane, no need for heals etc. Great guide, thank you very much.

I'd say it always depends on your team and how you're doing. If you can get your jungler / tank to build aegis and solari, you can go for rylai's. If your team is rather loosing, go defensive. if you're raher winning, you can build some ap and magic pen.
I'm practising zyra support at the moment and have tried out a few combos by now. For me, it works best to go with 1/13/16 masteries and standart ap runes for a nice early poke. If they have a rather agressive lane, I go with support runes.
A bit of cdr and mana regen is a must do for me. spamming those skills scares the enemy quite much :P

generally, zyra is really fun to play as a support. i'd recomend to try it out and find the best runes/masteries to go with your own playstyle.

I'm liking this guide, even before I read it I was playing support zyra similar to this. So many of the top guide for her focus on ap mid, forgetting just how dangerous a well played zyra support can be. For the most part, the opponent building some mr isn't as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Her snare is only shortened by mercury's treads, even if it's doing less damage from their mr the fact that you stopped them in their tracks tends to get them killed in team fights. More often that not just the visual of her ult will scare them enough to back off for fear of being jumped on when they get knocked up. She's an unusual champion that benefits from unusual builds, no reason to stay straight suppport as zyra.

Rylai's Crystal Scepter seems legit, but the biggest hassle is getting so much farm. Of all the pro-level support Zyra players, most go support because of this reason.

Oh and astrolia's right, you can't go AP without going 9 in offense.

Whoever said it was for lane? The >implication of "building AP items" (if you've "built" them this is later in the game) + having Arcane Knowledge is being a damage threat later in the game. This is something support Zyra is good at. I have no idea how you play this game without seeing people build Hexdrinker, Guardian Angel, Wit's End, Banshee's Veil, Mercury's Treads, Aegis of the Legion, etc - those are all mres items.

I opted out of Arcane Knowledge for two reasons. The first is that it really won't help you in lane, as the enemy champions are unlikely to build any sort of MR, unlike the Chalice of Harmony/ Abyssal Mask that are common for AP Mids. The second is that with the aggressive playstyle, you're likely to take more harass from the enemy champions than normal, so I tried to make her a bit more durable.

Building AP on supports is fine, but your current masteries suck. Why build so many AP items then not get Arcane Knowledge ?

The idea here is to take an unconventional support build, avoiding the common aura items such as Aegis/Zeke's. The way you're supporting your ADC and other teammates is through harass and CC, rather than giving them Aura buffs (though WotA does help us harass more as well as grant an Aura).

This guide is designed for very active, aggressive play, rather than the normal passive support play. If you build Zyra like this and sit in the bush waiting for something to happen like most support champions, then you will lose your lane. Instead, you need to harass the enemy champions constantly, making it impossible for them to engage favorably, while leaving your ADC to free farm.

to many straight AP items to make this a support guide. in fact you only have 1 support item that could actually help your ADC

I'm revising the masteries at the moment.
As for GP10s, I only included Philo Stone in the item order because that's the only one that I get every time. I build HoG and/or Kage's, depending on how what stats I need and how far ahead we are in lane. If we're very far ahead, I try to just rush Rylai's, otherwise I typically build a Kage's. If we're getting poked down, I build HoG and potentially Kage's.

I don't really like your 0/9/21, i like go like 9/11/10 or someting like that
Also you get only 1 gp10?

The two major interpretations to support Zyra are to build her as a mini-AP carry because of her damage output despite being in a support role, or to build her like a "normal" support. Pros and high ELO people alike do both. There's even a featured guide on TSM that says to build Rylai's Crystal Scepter as support during mid game, and that guy also uses 9/0/21 and AP runes. And let's be honest here, if you're ahead, building her like a mini-AP carry is pretty threatening.