I found my S9 cheese strat: Smite-Charms-Qmax Zyra mid

Every season I languish in elo hell until I find my annual Zyra cheese strat and start climbing. S6 was spamming top lane. S7 was Sightstone/Oracle mid. S8 was Lich Bane/DCap "bot." And now here's the fresh hell hot off the grill for S9:

* 4x Faerie Charm start * Smite > Codex > Runic (EDIT: DO NOT BUILD TALISMAN OR MACHETE! UPGRADE CODEX TO RUNIC!) * QWEQE, then Q max * Primary Runes: Comet, MFB, Trans, Gathering Storm * Secondary Rune: PoM, Alacrity * Shards: Scaling CDR, AP, resist

Example games:

* https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/match/na/3149854799#participant8 * https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/match/na/3149951436#participant1

So the strat here is pretty simple and pretty versatile. Your goal is to dominate lane priority, punish roams, and generally tilt the enemy jungler. Explanations:

* Charm x4 costs 500g and is worth 13 regen at lvl 1, almost triple the regen of a Doran's. The resale value is 344, more than double the resale of a Doran's.

* Q max to increase poke damage and frequency w/o increasing mana cost. Cast at angle to safely target plants to enemy laner. Also allows you to sit on E for self-peel.

* Alacrity makes it easier to CS and target plants early. Most importantly, it scales your structure damage in mid/late. This choice helps diversify your macro options.

* Smite. The point here is to guarantee every cannon (fuck Windwall), get an earlier Echo proc around 9-10 minutes, and then just rotate around the map creating constant pressure. If the enemy jungler ganks top, you sneak drag and vice versa.

This strat has two distinct styles in lane phase depending on your threat level. The first is to constantly clip your laner with Q corners while spawning plants on both sides of the wave; you can't kill both plants immediately, and the attrition damage here is pretty oppressive. The second style is to just AFK the lane and CS with Q and plants from a very safe distance. In my opinion your biggest counters here are Fizz, Qiyana, and Xerath in lane, and Zac and J4 in jungle. Aside from these matchups and landing Qs consistently, lane phase is super easy.

But the point of this build is all about macro and being able to pick up any slack on your team. So after Runic, you want Liandry's and then Rylai's and then (ideally) Deathcap. Taken together, you have the ability to create pressure, use that pressure to take objectives, control the zone around objectives, and then translate that into downing turrets.

The downside is that you get flamed in 100% of games, which isn't very fun. =(