So am I credible? The answer is no, I suck and don't play to often. So why am I even making this guide? Reason being is that I really like to come up with strategies and make things my own.

Is this guide reliable? I strongly believe that it is for what its ment. I'm mostly making this guide to show that Alistar counters Riven top and champs similar to her very well. Alistar is a great asset to his team and with him top he can gain more xp/gold, win lane and put an enemy team member behind, and allow for more crowd control since you have the support role open.

Cons
-High Mana Costs or low mana pool (which ever it is)!
-Long cool downs early game!
-So slow!
-Unusual combo that needs to be practiced
-Can be kited

Pros
-Good roaming
-Strong late game (AoE cc on short cooldown)
-Great peeler or initiator
-Good Towerdiver

If you are going to play Alistar in the top lane, you want to pick him against champs that all in you like Riven, Fiora, Jax, etc. When going up against a melee/all in champ like say Riven, you can essentially avoid taken any damage while dealing damage. To do this you have to be patient and have good judgement of when to use your skills to avoid taking damage and dealing it.

For example, at any level, Riven try's to close the distance on you, she uses her q (broken wings) and on her 3rd q she can knock you up. Just as she uses her her 3rd q and is in her animation you can use your q/knock up and completely disrupt Riven, have her stunned, auto attack her, and maybe headbutt her away if you want. Alistar's q's range is alot bigger than Riven's w or stun ability range. Lets say your q is on cooldown, well just headbutt her away if you have that ability available.

Be careful that you do not waste your abilities by missing them because your opponent pretended they were gonna go in on you or you tried to engage but messed up. This will cost you alot of mana, and after you blow you abilities you really can't doing anything else, and you are so extremely slow that running away is terrible in the early stage of the game. Let them engage you (in most cases) if you have the upper hand and can harass/kill your opponent or zone them out than do so. But if not then let them engage you so you can disrupt them, let them take damage from you and minions and all you did was spend mana. With the the masteries I went with you can sustain a little better and really focus on farming. Thats were this playstyle comes into play, you're trying to farm and your opponent engages you, and you do this strategy.

Why should you play Ali top? Well he provides awesome crowd control for your team (on short cooldown late game as well) and you can never have to much crowd control on a team (as long as you have good source of damage), he is hard for the opposing team to gank because he can knock enemies up/away or use his ultimate/r to survive and retreat back to tower. His ultimate completely counters Riven, you don't even need to use your ult against Riven at all sometimes, just knock her away and wait for it to end. Riven has you stunned then maybe use your ult because it removes stuns and slows.

Flash - You just want this spell in general

Ghost - I like this with Alistar because when split pushing and enemy team groups up and ambushes me I can get away

Teleport - Can use this to split push as well. You can take this in unfavorable match ups to get back to lane faster. Can Use this to aid your team which is most important.

I just take ability power glyphs for fun when I know I'm going laning against someone like Riven. Take 9 Magic Resist glyphs for most cases if you are unsure or if you know you're going to lane against someone who is going to harass with magic damage.