Crimson Eye

Kaerdy/Curty,

Alistar is the archetypical tank in LOL. If you learn the game with him, you can play the other tanks very well. In the list of guides on the LOL Forums, the best one I read is the "Bulldozing with Alistar" guide. Also, I have included my own guide, just for you, here:

item build

1. meki pendant + 2 health potions
2. chalice of harmony
3. boots of speed
4. boots of swiftness
5. giant's belt
6. Either Frozen Mallet or Soul Shroud

other items to consider after the above:
(alternate first item instead of chalice of harmony) Tear of the Goddess - spamming Heals constantly will jack your Mana total sky high
Atma's Impaler - armor plus crit damage
Sheen - extra mana plus some AP, and good passive ability (increase base dmg of physical attack by 80% after doing an ability, which is an awesome follow up to Pulverize).

Warmog's Armor is not so good on Alistar. He can't farm as much as the other tanks, because he's defensive, so he won't make much use of Warmog's bonuses.

Unlike Ryze or many other champions, Alistar does not need many items to perform his duties as support tank. So don't worry about farming; worry about keeping your carry teammates alive. You can be level 11, while everyone is level 14, and you'd still be an awesome tank.

Passive - does extra damage to turrets

First three ability level ups (in this order):

1. Pulverize
2. Triumphant Roar
3. Headbutt

Priortize Triumphat Roar until the ability is able to heal 100 hp. In my opinion, by the time you level the ability up to this point, it's usefulness diminishes compared to your other two abilities.

Tactics:

Heal Spam - once you get to level 2, spam your heals like there's no tomorrow. Don't bother using your other abilities; they will drain your mana bar. However, your heal is low cost, plus its cooldown is reduced when a minion dies. Keep spamming it, and you and your minions will be knocking on the opponents' turret in no time. Keep spamming it especially when Karthus is on the other team. In early game, one heal is enough to prevent Karthus' ult from killing your lane-mate.

Stun-Punt combo - every guide will mention this as Alistar's main move. It's the melee's version of a skill shot. You Pulverize an opponent, walk around him to line him up, and Headbutt him to wherever you want him to go. This works *awesomenesslyness* at your turret. Example: some melee nub hits you near your tower. You see the tower's laser targeting system aim at him. Immediately Pulverize your opponent to stun him, then punt him closer to the tower. Unless the enemy has flash and/or cleanse, he will die. In this aspect, Alistar is good for "solo-defending" a lane if you're unlucky to get a 4v5 match. Anecdotal example: in many games, I've stunned/punt-turret-killed many opponents while soloing a lane, but I don't push. Eventually, the opponents give up pushing the lane unless another of their team joins them. Also, in early game, if you and your teammate gets an enemy low on hp, and he starts running, definitely punt him backwards, or into a wall. That's more time needed for the enemy to reach the safety of his tower, and time you can use to kill him. Also, offensively, if you're chasing down a guy, punt him to a wall (usually you can do this at the bend area of top and bot lanes). It's essentially a poor man's Flash ability to get your closer to the guy.

Hyper Aggressive Juggernaut - like Sivir, you dictate team fights. You have to be up front ahead of your teammates, not in the back (cause Alistar is slow, and by the time you move to the front lines, half your team is probably dead). So be ahead of your teammates, guarding people like Ryze, because Ryze IS NOT A TANK! I cannot stress how important that is, lol, although one of these days I will successfully build a tank Ryze. Anyway, when a team fight is about to start, be at the front. /Dance or /taunt, move side to side. It's the typical gang fight posturing, Broadway style. Communicate with your teammates. When one of them says "Go", rush in! Your goal is to get in the center of battle. Normally, I flash in, and the enemy goes "WTF???", then I Pulverize to stun them. This stun is AOE, so hopefully you can get more than one dude. This stun also sets up shots for your carry teammates. Example: You'll see Ashe's ginourmous arrow of pain follow you and/or Ryze sneak up and unleash his ult combo and/or Nunu runs next to you and does his ult, etc. By the time your teammates are done, hopefully all the enemies are dead or fleeing. This is where your Frozen Mallet comes in handy. The slow for 2.5 seconds will help your teammates catch fleeing dudes. What happens when the enemies aren't dead in that initial assault? It is your job to stay in the middle of everything. In all the chaos and confusion of a teamfight, your relative big model size means that your opponents might target you accidentally instead of a softer target. So go ahead and run next to your Twisted Fate. A relatively hyped up opponent will be bash clicking around TF, and will target you instead. Remember, pop your ult when you're between 25% to 40% HP. Why? Psychological damage. It's one thing to see HP drain from Alistar. It's very invigorating to the opponents. It's another when you pop your ult, and they see your HP drain at a VERY slow rate. They will then understand that they totally wasted their ults on you.

But what if your teammates are weak and puny, and you lose that teamfight? I'm glad you asked, cause heaven knows how many times this shit's happened to me:

Rearguard Martyr - when you take on the role of Alistar, you take on the role of tank support. What this translates to is that your life is worth less than a carry. Sad but true. Even sadder is that tanking is not very transparent. You may see something like "Ashe scored first blood" or hear "Ashe quad killed", but you will never see "Alistar intimidated the all 5 opponents from attacking a turret" or "Alistar gave you an awesome assist". There is one tactic in Alistar's playbook, however, that is very noticable. And that's saving a teammate from dying. Normally, if you see a low hp teammate running towards you, followed by an enemy, use Headbutt to knock the opponent away. Don't bother stunning him, just knock him away. If multiple enemies are chasing your bud, Headbutt the first guy, then stun the rest. And then run away. Note: if the guy you want to save sucks really bad, let him die. Ok, teamfights: if your team loses, you have to be the last to leave. Give your teammates the chance to runaway. So soak up the damage. At this point, you should have your stun and headbutt back from cooldown. Stun and headbutt opponents. You may die (at this point, your ult has already ended), but at least you fulfilled your role as support tank to the T.

Special Ops Combat Engineer - in mid to late game, it's your job to ninja attack low hp towers. Alistar's passive plus massive hp plus ult allows you to sneak away to a tower with low hp (less than 300), and you can destroy it. Let's say there's some conflict going on in top lane. Everyone's at the party but you. And in the bot lane, there's a turret that's almost dead. If you're at base, buy that potion that ups your attack speed. If not, don't worry about it. Head over to the turret, using the jungle. You do NOT want to appear on the mini map. Once you get to tower, bash it down. It doesn't matter if 10 million minions are there. Destroy the tower. If you die, you die, but destroying that tower is worth it. If you die, but fail to destroy the tower, you suffer a relatively useless death. Just remember your priorities: protecting your carries is important than ninja attacking a turret is important than dying a slow yet useless death.

Strategery

Alistar is slow and has almost zero offensive capability. Therefore, his ganking ability is slightly better than Soraka's. If you're not with a teammate when there's a fight, you will die. Slowly, but surely, you will die. To help prevent useless deaths, here's a list of "Do Nots":

Do not push past the enemy's outer tower alone (the exception being a ninja destruction of a turret, but by definition that's not pushing).
Do not initiate a team fight unless everyone else is ready, otherwise they will leave you at the altar.
Do not punt a full health enemy towards a teammate who is running away.
Do not punt an almost dead enemy away from teammates.
Do not forget to spam heal during team fights. The 100 hp heal alone may be enough to prevent your teammates from dying by poison or other DOT attacks.

Thus concludes my little guide on how to play Alistar. He is like a "point center" in basketball, a center who can not only D the lane, but also coordinate half-map offense, and will rack up assists like no tomorrow.

I noticed you have 2 boots in this build. I just want to mention that boots have exclusive movement benefits, they don't stack with each other.
Maybe you're suggesting swiftness to keep the combat speed bonus at +3 and the roaming bonus from mobility at +5? I would suggest against that.
Alistar is the worst farmer in the game. Every piece of gold you come across needs to be used to catch his itemization up to the appropriate phase of the game (early, mid, late). He will NEVER have the luxury of buying extra items.

You might want to replace soul shroud as well unless you want to get it early. From the looks of your build I would say Alistar wouldn't get that soul shroud until mid-late game and by then its no longer a competitive item.

Hope that helps!

Oh, I was implying you build boots of swiftness from boots of speed. On other characters, I buy boots of speed, buy another item, then upgrade boots, but for Alistar, I get boots of swiftness after chalice of harmony.

For me, Alistar's items past chalice and boots are situational, but I prefer to get whatever item it is to be based off giant's belt.

ah i see.
If you want to have more freedom with your build by taking the chalice out, I'd invest in a full set of yellow mp5 runes (the increasing ones not the flat ones) when you can afford it, it'll give you great mana regen throughout the game without getting bogged down by chalice.
I've found that they're very worth it.

intriguing rune setup! that would save a bundle to put towards other options. what do you think of heart of gold on alistar?

#2441147 Brillo wrote:

intriguing rune setup! that would save a bundle to put towards other options. what do you think of heart of gold on alistar?

I've never bothered to take it. I think heart of gold is great for Rammus or Malphite but Alistar already has tons of survivability between his heal and ult without stacking armor. Armor's not something that Alistar has to stack, because of his ult, its better for you to get more HP. Heart of gold gives HP too but there are better HP items out there.

What Alistar typically lacks is mana, cooldown reduction and damage. Tanking in LoL is very much like tanking in WAR, if you don't do enough CC and damage, there's no point for the enemy to attack you and they can just ignore you. Alistar needs the cooldown reduction and mana to keep up his CC to make him a threat.
Keep in mind, Alistar like the other hard tanks have 1:1 AP ratios so even a little bit of AP from items/runes makes a difference to his damage. The best way to give Alistar damage is to level up headbutt and pulverize whenever you can while keeping roar at level 1.
Maxing pulverize first gives you a lot of damage and it's also needed to farm backline minions and weak jungle creeps which Ali desperately needs.

Here's my Alistar build, its not the only way to play him obviously but I have over 100 games with him and a solid 2:1 win/loss with it so it's the one I like best. It may or may not be your cup of tea.

Summoner Spells:
Flash, Ghost

Runes:
Full Greater Quintessence of Fortitude
Full Greater Mark of Insight
Full Greater Seal of Clarity
Full Greater Glyph of Focus

Masteries:
0/16/14. Full veteran scars and meditation is key.

Itemization:
Start with Ruby Crystal -> Finish Catalyst the Protector -> Mercury Treads -> Glacial Shroud -> Guardian Angel (Game's usually end here) -> upgrade Catalyst to Banshee's Veil -> upgrade Glacial Shroud to Frozen Heart (skip if someone already has Frozen Heart on your team) -> Rylai's Scepter -> whatever the hell you want.

Starting with Ruby Crystal, full fort quints and veteran scars gives me 940 (or 920?) hp. That starts you off with exactly twice as much hp as a Sivir at level 1.

Hope that helps. Sorry this was soooo long.

thanks for the advice! i'll try your setup sans runes the next time i play LOL.

hopefully the servers are stable tonight.

Looking forward to playing with ya ron.