Malphite vs Alistar. Which is the better choice for support tank?

Uh, Alistar.

You can't beat, 70% DR without needing to scale tank items.

Malphite is not good support.

Alistar/Naut way better.

if you want to play a hipster tank support, go Naut or Maokai. Otherwise, pick Alistar.

Malphite support is trash.

Malphite support is kind of troll. Your main draw is an AS slow that you'll never get close enough to land. Alistar has a malphite ult at level 2, as well as amazing innate tank scaling.

and what are u gonna do with Malph support? Malph is mana hungry, provides no utility pre 6, no trading power, he wont have any items later to be useful. All u have is that ultimate, and Leona, Braum , Alistar provide much more utility and CC

probably the funniest and stupid question i have seen on boards... Malphite isnt even a support.

soo lets compare:

Malphite: low CD small range AS and MS slow

long CD knockup, unstopable

Alistar:

low cd heal

low cd knockup

low cd stun

medium long cd CC cleanse

uhh i think its obvious who is a support in general

Malphite is just an easier Alistar with some targeted poke and much, much longer cooldowns. He isn't even that much easier anymore now that you can buffer Alistar's combo. There may be some situations where you want Malphite over Alistar, but those situations are few and far between.

Alistar. He is significantly more useful when deprived of gold and experience, his CC is more flexible and he isn't dependent on level 6 to get his gap-closer or hard CC.

Nautilus, good talk.

Alistar has better cc pre-6, both for offensive and for peel, sustain for him and his ally, and is tankier when at a gold deficit.

malphite scales better with items ,

alistar provides peel and sustain and ult = mal with items

Definitely Alistar. Especially with his combo now being buffered, it makes it easier on new Alistar players to get the hang of his mechanics. In my opinion, Alistar does it all. He has decent sustain off of his heal (which while being very minimal mid-late game is actually quite nice in lane), he can engage with his headbutt-pulverize combo or a flash-pulverize, he can disengage by using headbutt defensively. Granted, you get a little more damage out of Malphite but his main pull as a support is his ult, which Alistar effectively can do on a much lower cooldown.

If you are mechanically decent alistar is better due to having lower cooldowns thus better peels.

If you are pretty poor mechanic wise then malphite is quite obviously the superior choice.

Alistar has better sustain, that gives him the edge.

Personally I think Nautilus still beats them both.

malphite...once level 6 hits, if malphite is anywhere near you...run...run far away

They are both good. I will list pro's and cons.

Alistar

Pros: -One of the best peelers -Small heal (Smaller by tomorrow) -One of the best ultimates in the game for turret dives -Strong engage potential

Cons: -Melee only -Long cooldowns -Larger learning curve -Weak skirmishing power -Heavily team reliant (Not good in lower elo's)

Malphite

Pros: -Poke with Q that can't be blocked by bodies or minions -Small skirmishing power -Regenerating shield for great sustain in the laning phase (Helps with Q Pokes) -Attack speed slows (Strrrrooooooonnnnggg vs those auto attack reliant champions) -Ultimate -Does very well in AD heavy metas due to armor ratios (More damage than most tank supports) -Can roam and gank better than Alistar in solo queue

Cons: -HORRIBLE peel -No sustain abilities for your ADC -Can't tower dive as well as Alistar -Mana issues if you decide to get trigger happy with the poke

Summary:

If you do not trust your ADC to be the primary carry and you love the ability to poke, Malphite.

If you do trust your ADC and won't need any skirmishing power to try to snowball the other lanes, Alistar.

I believe Alistar to be the overall better support. Peel for your ADC is extremely important right now. However, most of the time I find myself in games where protecting the ADC is not worth it. By most of the time, I mean about 90% of the time. It is why I moved away from the support role for the time being considering how bad the support role is overall right now.

Final thought:

Outside of those two supports there are better options.

-Nautilus -Blitzcrank -Brand

While Brand isn't a tanky option, he can still have a lot of health and EXTREME carry potential. In my opinion, Brand is THE best low elo support. Especially if you sacrifice sightstone for more damage + health items. People in lower elo rarely know how to take advantage of the wards you have placed anyway so you might as well skip the sightstone and just place pinks on the important objectives.