Zyra

Zyra was not born gradually; she emerged fully formed out of an ancient, sorcerous catastrophe in Ixtal, the isolated jungle nation that guards its elemental magic from the rest of Runeterra.

She exists as a hybrid of plant and human, and new growth follows wherever she steps, kindled by her presence. Mortals, in her view, are little more than material for her seeded progeny — she shows no hesitation about cutting them down with flurries of deadly spines when they cross her path. Her larger purpose has never been made clear; what is certain is her drive to colonize new ground and crowd out every other form of life competing for it.

Her kit turns that drive into mechanics. Garden of Thorns, her passive, spawns seeds around her that appear faster as she levels up, and casting Deadly Spines or Grasping Roots near one of those seeds grows a plant that fights at her side. Deadly Spines sends vines exploding outward in an area, growing a Thorn Spitter if cast near a seed. Rampant Growth plants a seed directly, and she can store several at once for later use. Grasping Roots snakes through the ground to root and damage anything it touches, growing a Vine Lasher under the same seed conditions. Her ultimate, Stranglethorns, conjures a twisted thicket that damages enemies as it expands and launches them into the air as it contracts, enraging any plants caught inside.

Allies who play her lean into ambush, seeding a patch of brush and luring enemies into the resulting kill zone, since dropping a seed right where a spell just landed gives the best chance of a plant growing exactly where it’s needed. Opponents are told to fight that setup directly: her seeds die the moment someone steps on them before she can grow them, the plants themselves take a fixed amount of damage similar to wards and wither on their own before long, and dragging a fight to another part of the map strips her of whatever seeds she has already gathered. Champions such as Malphite and Nidalee occupy the same broad orbit of nature-bound figures she is often placed alongside.