Let's talk Alistar

Hello friends of the balance community, I am here to give you my 2 cents on the purple cow, Alistar.

I am a platinum Alistar main on the NA server and I have been playing him since season 4 back when his w+auto sneak attack was still live. After they removed this function from the champion itself, I only had the choice to play bottom lane support. I used to play him top lane, but I find that his cooldowns and ability costs along with lack of damage have pushed him out of solo lanes altogether. I don't blame riot for this, since was was probably designed to be a support rather than a solo laner. Other solo laners like riven or wukong can provide about as much utility while having low to no mana costs and a whole lot of more dps.

To begin, I would like to point out that I did some research on the champion so that I know what riot was thinking when he was designed. From what I have read in old forums, he was a god-tier jungler. He could do one camp and become an early game gank-monster due to his feared w+q combo that was simply too good in terms of cc. Riot noticed this and simply reworked his passive to lower his clear times and discourage cow jungle.

What I inferred from this history is that alistar was at one point meant to be a fighter/solo laner and NOT JUST a support.

The real reason for my rant here is not to buff alistar so he can 1v1 riven, or even jungle again. I want his passive changed/reworked/buffed. Alistar was nerfed and simply confined to the support role, so he should have a lot of "support-like" qualities right? If we compare other support champions and their kits we will notice they all provide some sort of cc/sustain/buff to their allies that makes them viable in duo lanes. Alistar only has his signature "mini malphite ult" and his mediocre heal to play support. The rest of his abilities make no sense in the support world, especially his passive. As a support main, you are always looking for positioning to either setup an counterplay or an initiation. His passive forces him to either use his heal or ultimate before he initiates. On top of that these abilities root him for a small period of time, making his passive "trample" good only when he has to escape through an ally minion wave. If you play support like me, you run at least 21 points in the utility, and your only real power comes from your above than normal movement speed and summoner cooldowns. AP annie support will always have more damage than you but she might not catch up to you if you have utitlity masteries. By using your passive as alistar, you enter combat and take away your movement speed buff from your masteries, on top of that you are already a few units farther away from your opponent because you pressed a button.

You can say "but annie is a mage and not really a support." Let's look at janna. another defensive support i play. Janna has aoe knowckup (like alistar), a targeted slow, a shield, and an aoe heal that also works as displacement (somewhat like alistar). As you can see these are two very different champions, despite having some sort of ability that is similar to the other's. What janna makes her "better" than alistar is the fact that her passive synergizes with her sole role of keeping-the-carry-alive support role. Alistar can't do that. Alistar's passive is inferior to other's such as janna and even nautilus that roots people on auto-attack.

I beg that you please rework his passive so that either alistar can adapt to a new meta or simply fit into the support role more properly. Currently, his passive damage has a meager .1 ratio to enemies and .2 to towers. Zyra's passive gives her an aoe true damage nuke that has range.

RITO PLEASE