Thanks to Riot reverting the one nerf Alistar actually needed back in the day, I am now Plat 3!

My win rate with Alistar since the 4.12 patch has gone from ~46% (staying very near to the average Alistar win rate) to 53.8% in ranked... I've climbed to a new high for me since the introduction of ranked games, Platinum 3.

My only (Alistar) loss since the Alistar buffs has come from a game with a top lane AD Malzahar.

When I mention the "one nerf Alistar actually needed back in the day" I'm referring to the ultimate nerf to reduce the 70% damage reduction to 50 and 60 at levels 6 and 11 respectively.

He was nerfed over and over and over in a multitude of ways to try to take him out of play, and...once that nerf hit, it actually stuck for the most part (and introduction of new supports like Thresh, Zyra, Lulu) helped shove him out the door as well.

With his ult at 50% at level 5, he is essentially given 100 armor/MR for the duration of his ultimate (except, it actually stacks multiplicatively with whatever armor/MR he already has) -- bumping that to 70% makes his damage mitigation similar to being given about 234 armor/MR (which still stacks multiplicatively with whatever armor/MR he already has).

Back then, this was giving him way too much tanking potential in mid game team fights without tank items and would guarantee he never really needed to buy them anyway (though FH is never a bad buy on him for the CDR). Furthermore, it made it so that if Alistar's team was AHEAD, Alistar was an unstoppable tank menace that could dive towers with no fear.

The nerf didn't really change that by -much- (it just made it harder to get ahead as easily) -- but what it DID cause to happen was that it made it so that if Alistar was ever BEHIND, his play pattern in a team fight tends to be that he gets burst down so much before he can ult, that there's not a lot of health for him to use his empowered damage mitigation to go into a fight and tank. He may get off a stun before he dies. Maybe. But he will die, for sure.

What Alistar really needs out of his ultimate is for the damage reduction to be -REDUCED- rather than -INCREASED-, and Alistar be given max HP (and size) for the duration of the ultimate, much like how Nasus/Renekton are.

With this change, he would be AND feel less oppressive while ahead (he'd visibly take more damage, he'd just be able to withstand more of that visible damage) -- but, when behind, he wouldn't be as punished when ulting from lower HP thresholds, since he would be given a bigger buffer of HP. This would give him a larger window with which to work. (It would also make it so that shields+Alistar doesn't turn into a ridiculous concept anymore.)

Overall, I'm glad to see Alistar back into being a strong pick... but I'm frustrated by the knowledge that the reverted nerf which has made him strong again was one he'd needed from the start.