Alistar Build Guide by whitevelcro

This guide is a work in progress, and was last updated in patch 7.11.

A while ago, I tried Alistar jungle, but gave up because I felt his clear was too bad and I was losing too much health to jungle viable. But recently, I was inspired by OddOrange's A-Z jungle challenge, when he played Alistar jungle, and decided to practice jungle clears in a custom game. I believe I found good enough items and a healthy enough jungle route to make him a worthwhile off-meta pick for jungle.

The jungle clear is the most important part of Jungle Alistar. Unfortunately, while Alistar is probably capable of clearing the buffs early, that clear leaves him low and unable to gank at level 3, one of his biggest power spikes.

This clear does leave his buffs vulnerable to counterjungling. However, he does not need them to be effective early. It's more important for him to get farm safely and have the opportunity to get his laners ahead.

First Clear:
Start on Raptors with your E. You can get a small leash from your mid laner, but this isn't strictly necessary. Stand in the middle of the raptor camp, autoing the big raptor, then smite the big raptor once it gets low enough. continue to wolves, then gromp. You will have smite up again at gromp, allowing you to regain a lot of health on Gromp, or you can risk going for the scuttle crab with your smite instead. From gromp, look to either gank a lane or clear the scuttle crab.

After doing one of those two things, back, and you should have enough gold for both the hunter's machete and hunter's potion.

Second clear:
With Hunter's Potion, you should be able to successfully jungle any camp you wish, but most of your blue side is cleared, so you can go to red side and do Krugs, and your raptors (and hopefully your red) will be up afterward. If you do a full clear (which you can with hunter's potion and smiting raptors), you will end the clear with just enough gold for Bami's Cinder (or Caufield's Warhammer, if you're going AD), and then if you do Krugs after your base, you will hit level 6 from Krugs.

From here, you can generally clear the jungle as you please, ganking or farming situationally.

Here is a video demonstrating the early clear:

Obviously Tank/Cinderhulk Alistar is very likely the most viable. Alistar works very well as a tanky front line initiator and peeler for his team. However, both AD and AP Alistar jungle are very likely doable. I haven't tested the builds in game yet, though, so the details of the item builds beyond a few core items is unclear.