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Thoughts on new Alistar

mcjagger·11/15/2016, 11:02:10 PM·4 votes·1,986 views

Diamond support main here with some thoughts on Alistar. Alistar

I've never really been a fan of Alistar. I always had him as a pocket pick because of his powerful set of engage tools. The changes he was given this patch made me reconsider. I've played a good amount of games with him experimenting with several different builds to try to make him work. The entire time I just felt like he was weaker overall.

Many people have commented that his changes were an outright buff while I was struggling to perform well with him.

champion.gg has finished aggregating data for this patch and sure enough his winrate is just under 48%, making him one of the bottom 4 supports.

With that in mind, I wanted to provide some feedback on everyone's favorite cow and the changes he's felt. Please bear in mind that I'm approaching each of these sections in a (mostly) isolated way. If every one of my proposed changes were implemented, I think he'd probably be too strong. So consider that when reading please and as always, consider numbers placeholders. I've tried to explain rationale in all the decisions which is always more important than suggestions.

#Courage of the Colossus

I wanted to start this off with a quick note that CotC is obviously very good and it's almost certainly inflating Ali's winrate. When this inevitably gets nerfed, I have to suspect we'll see Ali's winrate drop even further.

#New Passive - Triumphant Roar

I like that it encourages interaction by gaining Triumph stacks by displacing enemies. I think the heal is probably a bit too strong. Overall, I do like the passive but I don't think it fits the Alistar identity very well. What I want to do as Alistar is land a good QW combo on someone who is overextended and turn that into a kill. To me, this new passive doesn't reward engages, it rewards disengages.

Here's what I'd like to see change from his passive:

Upon reaching 7 stacks, Alistar roars, granting himself and his nearest ally bonus health regeneration for 3 seconds. This health regeneration is tripled when in combat with enemy champions

Ideally, I'd like to see these numbers tuned so that the total health restored when not in combat with enemy champions is about 2/3rds of the live values. This might be a weak idea but the general concept is that I think his passive needs to help him look for opportunities to engage, not just sit back mooing his ally to victory.

#Q change - no more stun

Alistar's old Q used to stun enemies for .5s after they landed. This made landing a good WQ on a group really significant. His new e now provides a full 1s stun on a single target to make up for the change but it's not enough for losing the ability to disengage reliably with Q.

I started to notice that I was just dying a LOT as Alistar. Qing some pursuers used to provide enough distance that you had options to escape. It doesn't feel that way anymore. When I'm getting chased, I'm probably going to die unless we can turn the fight.

Additionally, his flash Q W combo feels much less reliable. If you get slowed at all after your Q, it's far too hard to get behind your target to W them towards your team.

Here's my proposed change to Q:

For every enemy champion hit, Alistar gains 10% movement speed for 3 seconds that decays over the duration.

This rewards his highest moments and gives him some much needed maneuverability and I think still allows his QW on a single target to be counterplayed.

#New e - Trample

My biggest problem with Alistar is around Trample primarily because he is so incredibly easy to get away from before you can apply the stun. I have several ideas for how to change this:

  • Alistar gains 8% attack speed for every stack of Trample.

This gives Alistar's stun-bearing swing a 40% attack speed boost which is by no means game breaking but will help him avoid the frustrating scenario of his target simply being able to walk away from him.

  • Alistar stuns his target for .25s for every stack of Trample. Upon stunning a target, Alistar no longer gains stacks of Trample.

I like this one because it rewards for you understanding the scenario in which you are fighting. If you know they have no mobility and you can stick to them for the full 5 stacks, you are awarded an extra .25s of stun. If you know that your only chance to get an auto on them is when you have 2 stacks, then you get a weaker stun overall and miss out on the bonus damage from having 5 stacks. Tradeoffs!

#R - no more AD

Losing the AD on R is definitely not a huge concern for me as support Alistar but I do think it causes a problem for his playstyle. Alistar's ult is supposed to be powerful because when he pops it he is telling the enemy team that attacking him is a waste of time if his allies are nearby. Having bonus AD made him at least slightly threatening. He could slap the enemy squishies a few time and provide at least a little bit of damage. Right now he pops his R and ... does what? His R doesn't make him any more threatening than he already was, just more durable.

Here's a couple ideas I'd to see about his R. Maybe one, maybe both, maybe numbers need tuning. I'll explain rationale anyway:

  • When Unbreakable Will is active, Trample slows affected enemies by 25%

  • When Unbreakable Will is active, Trample's damage is increased by 100% and the bonus damage on his auto with 5 trample stacks is converted to true damage

As you can see, both of these are ideas that reward Alistar for making himself a priority target during his ult. It requires timing and skilled use of his e activation. It still allows him to choose between peeling or diving and I don't think the 50-220 true damage is an outrageous amount. Enemy squishes are incentivized to stay away or slow him or he gets to actually provide a little burst of damage on tanky divers killing his backline.

I personally would also like to see a slight buff to the damage reduction because even with 50% at rank 1, I feel like I'm not mitigating much. This is more wishful thinking and probably not necessary if his utility during ult was improved with the above changes.

Thanks for reading, please let me know what you think or if you have any ideas in the comments below.

5 Comments

Fondling Gems11/15/2016, 11:38:04 PM2 votes

Quick comment: His E would have to have a per target built in cd or you could cheese with trample and an AS build by just getting constant short stuns off. which would just look and interact strangely. So it would have to have at least a 1 second cd per target.

Chick Fil Atio11/16/2016, 1:25:12 AM2 votes

Wow, this is a fantastic post. You put a lot of effort into Ali's redo and it really shows. I think the changes that you make fit his playstyle well and would definitely make him one the ultimate anti-squishy poke supports.

Thanks for the post. I don't necessarily agree with you on the passive, but you other points are spot on. Also, I do suspect that his winrate will drop when CotC is nerfed.

Thurst282/28/2017, 1:59:09 AM1 votes

Two things off the bat.

  1. Great article sorry I am a little late to it.
  2. I am amazed that people make it out of bronze as a support main. I tried and would wreck bot do a great job and just get no where.

I think Alis win rate being so low is 2 fold. The biggest of the 2 being the anti tank meta. With lethality and hyper mobility it's hard out here for a tank. Second would be people not knowing how to use him and how weak the towers have gotten where flash Q W doesn't really secure a kill anymore. He does feel weak over all and has never been my favorite pick he even feels weak when I face him too which he didn't in the past.