Alistar Build Guide by bayou

Introduction

Hi, this is my first guide. It is a semi-advanced guide for support alistar. This is mostly from my experience, overall knowledge and some inspiration from my favourite Alistar players such as Egym and Madlife.

Items

(See the notes to the builds at the top if you haven't already)

Using Relic Shield:

You should only use Relic shield to execute a minion of one or mor of the following is true:

You have full stacks

There is a canon minion to use it on

Your adc is missing around 100hp or more

You are going back soon

Your adc is trying to lasthit under tower

Or else you should wait.

Siturational & Optional Items:

: A really good item if you have a fed and squishy person. Also good against teams with hard engage CC. I get this 50% of games.

: You should get this this if they attack speed reliant people. The stats are useful on alistar.

: Definitely not a staple item on Ali but good if someone is already getting locket and you need MR.

: Mostly a bad item on Ali, but i get this if fights are long and most enemies are very tanky. You shouldnt buy it more often than 1/20 games.

: Get this instead of sunfire if you dont think it provides enough durability.

Captain: Get this when you are doing most engages and your team needs to catch up faster

Alacrity: When winning an you have tabi.

Homeguard: When defending/losing

Spells

Get Q to rank 4 first(so Q and W have the same cooldown), then max E for better heals.

Trample Good for pushing, but does a tiny amount of damage to champions and towers as well. make sure you dont push your lane unwantedly by accident with this.

Pulverize Very strong spell, if you land a good headbutt it can win you a fight

Headbutt Good for peel and knocking somebody in to a bad place for them to be.

Triumphant Roar Nice heal especially for teamfighting, spam this if your team is low and pushing a wave.

Unbreakable Will Alistar's ulti is VERY strong, if not OP. You should do this a little bit after the start of a fight, if you do it right at the beginning the enemies might not focus you at all when they see you have it on. Also great for diving. Remember this spell also gives you a good bit of AD, so you can deal decent damage to the enemy squishies.

Team Work

Diving
Alistar i think is one of the best, if not the best, champion at tower diving when he has his ulti.
When your'e about to dive, make sure your team is with you and then go in for the kill. When the first tower hit is about to hit you, you activate your Unbreakable Will and take almost no damage for 7 seconds, you can either do a regular W+Q combo or flash+Q and knock the person into your team.
Keep im mind that you generally can only dive a person safely if you are

Engaging
You are often the person to engage. When your team is ready, you should use talisman if you have it, then there generally are two ways to engage:

Flash in and land a Q on as many people as possible, but mainly the squishy damage dealers, and immidiately headbutt one of the squishies into your team.

Use a regular W+Q combo, and try to hit as many people as possible.

Peeling
Alistar is great at peeling, so it is important to have in mind when team fighting. If you engage yourself, you should usually go back and protect your damage dealers rather than trying to kill enemies. Knocking up and away brusers and assassins is a very good thing to do for your squishies

Zoning the jungler
One last thing which i think a lot of people miss is the ability to zone the enemy jungler away when taking Baron or dragon. You basically stay near him and push him away when the objective goes low, and just Q him if he comes close, this will make it very hard for the person to smite steal.

The Full Potential

Alistar is very much about knowing his potential and how to do it. To learn this, you must know his exact range and timing on his spells. You can start by going into a custom game and try for yourself when you hit people with your q and when you dont. Also practise how his W works- how far it pushes people and at what angle, when they get stopped by walls etc. Next you can try playing and practicing this versus bots, since its a little different with moving targets. When you get a hold of this, you can move onto the next part:

The Combo

The Q+W combo is one of the most known tricks on alistar, and is often what makes him shine, so mastering this is vital if you want to be a very succusful Alistar.
It is quite simple, but not always easy to do. If you don't know what the combo exactly is, it is where you use Headbutt, and immidiatly after Pulverize. This will cause you to charge to your target and knocking them up before they are pushed away.
As this is easier shown than explained here is a good demonstration of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8s1WvAYpgs#t=54

So, if you get the hang of this and get confident with the abilities, you can do things you wouldnt be able to do before.

Making the tables turn

Sometimes you will find yourself in a bad spot, but you will be able to turn the situation and get something good out of it. This is often when you have a tower near you. Lets say you and your adc are being pushed under your tower and their support walks near tower range to poke you, so he will take aggro for a second. This is where you can flash+Q and while he is knocked up, push him under the turret for a guarenteed kill. This also works great if your'e getting ganked. The best way to really know when you can do what, would be to just try to do crazy stuff, and get a feel for what works.

Here are some great examples of excellent use of his abilities:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC1EoGitTkU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n41RakMXCE0

Masteries

4/23/3 might sound a little odd but I think it is pretty decent since you get everything useful from the defense tree and -CD% and mana regen to make more use of your CC. Some people prefer 0/21/9 with Insight to get cookies which i don't think is bad either.
I would go with something like this if i chose 0/21/9:

Runes

This is pretty standard and is what i prefer. You can also run hybrid marks and/or a few Mp5 Glyphs if you prefer it. I opt for full armor instead of some Hp since you get Hp items, pots and have heals which makes a lot of use of the armor.

Matchups and Syngery

Alistar can foil a leona engage pretty easily, and she has a pretty hard lane against Ali depending on the ADC's

Morgana is pretty annoying since she can stop your CC and catch your adc, but as long as you wait for her to shield, you can knock her away when she ults.


Alistar is probably one of the strongest picks against blitz imo. You just need to stick very close to your ADC to block his grab, after you get hooked you can knock their adc away and Q blitz, resulting in a 2v1 fight, which almost always will be a very good trade.

Same as blitz. You can also stop people from reacting thresh when they take the lantern if you have good timing with Q or W.

You should avoid playing against a vayne since she can knock you away from landing good CC, and her Silver bolts' damage scales with your hp and is true damage so goes through your ulti and any armor.

(Same for Zyra, Nami, Lulu, Annie, Karma, and Janna)
Alistar can have a hard time against squishy poke champs because of their consitent long range poke, but if you stay passive in lane they might overextend into a gank or getting knocked under the tower.

Alistar works great with her ulti with the use of a little coordination, as shown in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCDZsavGUOQ

Summary

So look for opportunities, ward and peel!

This was my Alistar guide. I hope you liked it! Please leave me feedback as it will encourage me to improve and update the guide^^