Introduction
I picked up Alistar after watching Chaox's marathon and saw him play it. Watching that stream taught me a few crucial things about this champion.
1. You dont need tank items neccesarily because of your ultimate, which reduces physical and magical damage taken by 75% and makes you immune to CC.
2. You dont need much mana regen because the only ability you should be spamming is your E skill, the small heal.
3. Headbutt pulverize combo. Use your W, and when the animation starts, start bashing Pulverize, your Q skill. This allows you to deal some nice damage from range.
You need to be careful though because if you start bashing Q too early, the combo will fail because you wont do the charge.
Obviously if you use your W from the max range, you have more time to get your Q skill off so try to do this combo from max range all the time.
(Your team wont like it if you're chasing and you headbutt the enemy to escape.)
Abilities
Trample
Every time you use an ability, you gain an aura that deals some minor damage and allows you to pass through units. Very nice for escapes if you have huge minion waves on your way.
Pulverize
[spoiler]Cost: 70 / 85 / 100 / 115 / 130mana
Cooldown: 17 / 16 / 15 / 14 / 13seconds
Magic Damage: 60 / 105 / 150 / 195 / 240 (+0.5 per ability power)[/spoiler]
Just an amazing ability. Does a nice amount of damage ( 240 + 50% of your ability power at max rank), knocks your enemies up in the air AND stuns them. Enemies hit by this are usually stunned for a bit after they land.
Headbutt
[spoiler]Cost: 80 / 90 / 100 / 110 / 120mana
Cooldown: 14 / 13 / 12 / 11 / 10seconds
Magic Damage: 85 / 130 / 175 / 220 / 265 (+0.7 per ability power)[/spoiler]
Another amazing ability and the main reason why alistar is so dangerous. You can flash into the enemy, pop pulverize and position yourself so that you can headbutt the enemy carry into your own team. Just remember to use your ultimate so you dont die right after the headbutt.
Triumphant Roar
[spoiler]Cost: 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 / 60 mana
Self Heal: 60 / 90 / 120 / 150 / 180 (+0.2 per ability power)[/spoiler]
This ability allows alistar to stay in lane alone or with his partner for long periods of time. The cooldown goes down by 2 seconds, every time an enemy unit dies near you. The manacost is also low as hell, so feel free to use it everytime when someone is below 100% HP. You should also be spamming this in team fights. You heal your team mates for 50% the amount you heal yourself.
Unbreakable Will
[spoiler]Cooldown: 120 / 100 / 80seconds
Duration: 6 / 7 / 8 seconds
Bonus Attack Damage: 60 / 75 / 90[/spoiler]
This allows alistar to be a tank without any tank items. 75% damage reduce, Bonus AD and CC immunity for 8 seconds? How great is that? Great ability to use against swain and veigar for example, with CC that doesnt activate immediately.
Build
[spoiler] ->-> ->->
->->->[/spoiler]
This usually works out pretty nicely for a balanced team (2 AD's and 3 AP's or viceversa)
If you have more AP champions on the opposing team, you could buy Force of Nature instead of Frozen Heart
Skill order
Level 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Pulverize o o o o o Headbutt o o o o o Triuphant Roar o o o o o Unbreakable Will o o o
Final words
If you have any questions about the item build or something you would like to add, or just common feedback, feel free to post it in this thread.
I hope this gets more players to play this bold cow that is very under-rated in normal games atleast.