🌸Electrocute is usually better than Dark Harvest for Zyra because you are fundamentally a snowballer with low early damage. You want an immediate spike to abuse the enemy team with and to be able to fight back against your hard matchups. I'm currently experimenting with the Conqueror page (for games where having more flashes, more hp after they dive onto you, and components matter more e.g. ruby crystals/cloth armors/null magic mantles are super impactful) I listed.

🌸Cheap Shot basically always procs because of your e.

🌸Sixth Sense is very very useful for spotting out wards and taking up space to make sure a play is 100% and for preventing successful invades. If you see your camp was warded recently you're immediately prepped mentally to fight and you won't put yourself in a compromising position.

🌸Treasure Hunter helps you snowball.

🌸Legend: Haste compensates for the fact we typically don't want to build cdr until third item in making sure we can smoothly proc our plants as they spawn and as our w comes off cooldown.

🌸Cut Down just ends up dealing more damage as you're the jungler and a ranged poke champion.

🌸The ability haste again helps our fights be much smoother since we prefer to go 2 non cdr items and sorc shoes, as well as helping speed up our first few clears by quite a bit since we won't be waiting around too long on our w timer.

🌸Move speed and adaptive force are both okay in most games, right now I prefer move speed shard. There's a few games where I can see scaling hp being better but I don't think about it because I don't have the mental capacity to do that and make a gameplan.

🌸Flat health, same as above, the others can technically be better in a good chunk of games but I don't have the mental capacity to think about it.

🌸With the season's bonus move speed in jungle imo there's no reason to go blue pet when you're playing a jungler that has no desire to gapclose, along with the fact that red lets you set up for yourself when you don't have red buff. This is why I dislike Rylai's Crystal Scepter, you're going to have red buff or red pet slow to start fights the vast majority of the time anyway.

🌸Coach Rogue made an excellent video about item builds which emphasized multiplicative scalings. Percent pen applies before flat pen which means that they scale incredibly well together. This scaling is what allows Zyra to one shot squishies.

🌸Liandry - Fated ashes enables your clear and Liandry is way way way better than Blackfire Torch since it doesn't have it's power budget wrapped up in mana and the hp is super useful into Zyra's worst matchups.

🌸Sorcerer's Shoes - boots having flat pen enables you to get a percent pen item third.

🌸Shadowflame - better than Stormsurge because the crit damage from Shadowflame acts as a damage multiplier and applies on jungle camps. This gives you as much or more tempo as the movement speed does when you know your damage.

🌸Cryptbloom - I default to this over Void Staff because none of our other core build items have ability haste, but I go Void Staff if I know I'm going to grab some ability haste immediately after or they're building a lot of mr and know I can get away with just forcing an ability item after (e.g. don't absolutely need zhonya's).

🌸Trinkets - If you're starting on red it can be nice to have sweeper walking back and forth from red to raptors to catch them trying to get a ward out. Yellow trinket is nice to have for ganks to drop a ward in bushes without using a seed, at level 1 warding against invades, and scuttle crab fight. In my elo, they typically do not ward before you walk into river. Zyra is very flexible in when/if you swap to sweeper, so sitting on stealth ward after your first clear can be okay. If that's your gameplan, make proper use of control wards along with sixth sense, e.g. don't use a control ward to clear a ward that spots you with sixth sense, use it to check if something is warded while sixth sense is on cd.

🌸Liandry - Core build first item explained in the above section.

🌸Sorc shoes - Core build boots explained in the above section.

🌸Cryptbloom - Core build third item explained in the above section. If you have 3-4 AP consider going cryptbloom second depending on how fed you are (less fed -> more inclined to pick this up since they'll have more mr by the time you get to your third item).

🌸Shadowflame - Core build second item explained in the above section. Just slightly worse throughout the game, still does a lot of damage and let's you one shot squishies+clear extremely fast.

🌸Oblivion Orb - Zyra is excellent at applying Grievous Wounds for your entire team especially in the jungle role, so picking this up after your liandry's but before you finish your second or third item can give you a really nice spike into their healers.

🌸Zhonyas - VS very heavy dive this item can be good second/third, but don't be afraid to just build seekers and then sit on it and build shadowflame instead if you don't pop it before you finish zhonyas. The threat of being able to get an extra rotation off can give you a lot of breathing room. You want to play in a way where if they blow everything on your zhonyas or seekers you get far more value than you spent on it.

🌸When you buy seekers and you base/die with it still up it can be much more efficient to just sit on your large rod and seekers and start building shadowflame. You can always shell out the 450 gold when it becomes worth it either by popping it or just to have another completed item.

🌸Bloodletter's Curse - This item is usually just worse than Cryptbloom second with effectively two exceptions: If the hp is overpowered in that game and/or it'll allow for your teammates to hit their spikes nicely without absolutely having to jam a cryptbloom or void staff in first two/three items. Ideally both of these conditions are met before you think about buying it.

🌸Void Staff - This item is mainly good in games where you know there's a threat of them stacking mr AND you know you're going to be building cdr very soon/already have it anyway (e.g. a full ap game where for whatever reason bloodletter's curse isn't very good and they started stacking mr early so you have lucidity boots).

🌸Boots of Swiftness - Swifties help you get closer to land your e and help a lot vs champs like Olaf/Lillia or very skillshot reliant champs such as Elise or Nidalee. If you're very ahead, have plenty of other damage sources, want to be able to dodge more, and are not solo ap these CAN be a good pickup.

🌸Ionian Boots - can be good if by the time you start building it they already have enough magic resist to make the pen from shadowflame inefficient and you just want to go straight into your void staff (or sometimes bloodletter's) AND you want more flashes to be able to play into their dive.

🌸Merc Treads and Plated Steelcaps - These are for heavy ap or heavy ad teams respectively, but that's not really enough by itself. They have to have lots of chainable cc or lots of auto attackers to make either worth it.

🌸Don't go merc treads into nami diana malphite, just get sorc shoes into Banshee's Veil/Abyssal Mask/Zhonyas + null magic mantle/negatron cloak.

🌸Don't go plated steelcaps into two assassins like talon/zed/mage/adc, just get sorc shoes into zhonyas.

🌸Abyssal Mask - I know Zyra is long range but there's a lot of game states where the hp + mr + cdr + damage amp just wins you important fights along with oblivion orb and void staff. Think a game vs like Lissandra, AP Kai'Sa, and Swain.

🌸Morellonomicon - If you need a spike of cdr or survivability (drake in one minute, potentially baron in 2 vs a comp with a good amount of healing and burst as a possible example) just finishing morellonomicon can let you win the game because you'll be able to have R and tank enough damage on both of the game deciding fights.

🌸Negatron Cloak - Usually just sitting on Negatron Cloak until you finish your last item is preferable if they're heavy AP, banshee's is low value (say you're vs like a diana with rocketbelt and an aurora) and you don't want abyssal.

🌸Stormsurge - If you want to stay in one shot range and/or the movement speed happens to be great in that game this can be a great pick up after Cryptbloom.

🌸Mejai's Soulstealer - Niche, only build it in games where the move speed is very high value and your job is not necessarily to carry.

🌸Banshee's Veil - Niche, build if they have a poke comp so abyssal mask is dog or if they have several things like Bard R, Varus R, Naut Hook, etc. Verdant barrier has the same logic for sitting on it while you finish other items as Seeker's.

🌸Horizon Focus - I saw somebody talking about it and tried it out and I actually think it could be pretty decent throughout the game since it's very very easy to proc with your r and easy to proc with your e and q with set up. I have a theory that it's far more popular in Korea because their games are much shorter, so they're less likely to finish their third item in time for it to matter.

🌸Rabadon's Deathcap - Niche, only build if you are ultra giga fed and have 4 actual ap items or you can get half of your last AP item+elixir of sorcery once you finish rabadon's for the next fight.

🌸Dark Seal - I used to say don't buy this item, but I've tried it a few times when recalling to make a play on my weakside immediately after first full clear since I don't have enough for fated ashes and with boots it's actually felt pretty okay. I'm undecided on Mejais.

🌸Rylais - If you have red pet, that and red buff are more than enough set up for your E throughout the game. You do not usually need to be tripling down on building slows before third item in the current meta where stormraider's, swifties, and dead man's plate are popular. If you build an intermediary item between liandry and rylais (oblivion orb, seeker's, even cloth armor or null magic mantle) while very ahead, it's not too bad second. If you decide to take blue pet it's okay for what it does.

(DO NOT BUILD) 🌸BFT - Zyra JG only runs out of mana occasionally and every time I have it's because I've been overstaying on vision anyway + you do not scale well with raw ap so the bonus passive (not the burn) is low value.

🌸Elixirs - Elixir of iron is going to be better in 95% of games AND sometimes it's good to buy it before you get 5 items+control ward because it's just that impactful into dive comps that use stuns. You can sometimes justify going elixir of sorcery if you find yourself running out of mana or you want to stack up your rabadons, but Zyra scales relatively poorly with AP and is weak to dive, which elixir of iron is excellent for mitigating.

Blue Start: Play Video Wolves Start Play Video Raptors Start Play Video Red Start Play Video

This is a concept I'm taking from Coach Curtis which basically has to do with how willing you are to stick to your gameplan and play it out. If you build the confidence to not skip camps early, know who the win con is whether it's you or someone else and play with them until it changes, and say no to plays you know are bad, you will improve much faster because you will be able to say much more confidently that it was your decision that led to this result. This as to opposed to if you listen and go gank weakside when you have several camps up whenever they beg for help.

If you don't have this concept internalized, a good starting point is spending many many many games fully muted so that you can see what happens when you make decisions you believe in and learn from them.

When you're sieging, use your plants to tank tower. Say you killed 4 and you're taking mid towers, if you immediately use your w and q to place two plants and then a third with your passive, you've kept one minion alive. This is very impactful if you have 2-3 people autoing a tower and will win you games.

On later early game-early mid game clears, skipping your buff but not your raptors->krugs or wolves->gromp is extremely relevant to cheat tempo and put yourself in the right spot because you're two+ clears removed from the buff timer mattering.

It is usually better to sit on a control instead of buying a sixth item.

Camps level up throughout the first 8 levels of the game (spawning as the average level of everyone in the game). They continue to visually show a different level but the gold and exp they give does not scale past level 8. This is one of the things that makes getting invaded not always a huge deal as long as they cannot repeat invade you for the rest of the game. The time they're spending on killing your camps is time that they're not spending killing their own to get them respawned at a higher level faster.

Because Zyra clears so quickly, you can often walk into the enemy tri brush / blue jungle after you clear and fight them over their last camp.

You can experiment with your build how you want obviously but keep in mind that Zyra is one of the poorest AP scaling mages in the game.

In lobby, I like to try to pick second on blue side and first on red side and make sure that my adc is picking with me. If possible I like to swap after the ban phase is done so that I can make the enemy team respect that it could be Zyra support.

Zyra really likes to gank midlane from the corridor, so when you are blue side (1st pick), you're incentivized to path top, and when you're red side (2nd pick) you're incentivized to path down, both depending on how eager you are to gank midlane. If enemy mid is Yas, it's practically irrelevant. If you have a Lissandra or they have, say, an Orianna, it's extremely relevant.