Zyra found herself moved more into the support position after her update, but while she’s found success there as a damage-dealing support, she’ll apparently need quite a few changes to make her more viable in the mid lane.
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The mage-turned-support counterpart to Zyra would likely be Brand, a champ that has a new buff on the PBE which would help the champion to burn up the mid lane once again. Brand’s buffs include a new effect on his passive that gives him mana when he kills an enemy that’s ablaze, and similar changes to Zyra seem as though they’d go a long way for the champ.
Riot Meddler said that they’re open to pushing changes to Zyra if the Brand buffs work out as they’d like hope. When another user asked why Zyra hadn’t been rebalanced to exist as a support and a mid-lane mage, Meddler said that previous statements from other Rioters about keeping the mage viable in both roles were likely a case of “good intent” that simply didn’t work out.
“Some of that was that Zyra proved to be more of a balance challenge as a support post update than expected,” Meddler replied. “Some of it is also that even of release Zyra was better as a support. We did expect her to be a mid laner primarily, especially given common wisdom at the time was that that was just what mages did. Looking back though her kit’s one that matches support play a lot better than mid so we unintentionally mislead people about what they should expect from her.”
However, she’d need a bit more than just mana like Brand’s getting before she returns to mid. Meddler added that necessary changes would include allowing her to have more effective ways to CS while in without throwing her supporting power out of balance. One reader suggested a change where killing minions would decrease the cooldown for planting seeds, a change that Meddler said would be “pretty promising” among other needed changes.
Zyra may not be receiving mid-lane buffs for some time, so for now, continue looking for her in the bot lane attempting to blow up Ardent Censor supports.
