Thoughts on Alistar (or how headbutt should actually be changed)

Hey summoners (and hopefully some rioters), I just wanted to take a few minutes to make a detailed post about my thoughts on alistar such as why he should be more highly valued and some changes that could be made to raise his popularity/win rate. The TL/DR for this is as follows - Among smaller changes, W - Headbutt should be made so that if you cast it normally it functions exactly how it is now, but if you self cast it, the skill becomes a slightly slower moving skill shot that hits all enemy units in its path and cannot go through walls.

I realize the first question most people will ask is something like "why is this guys opinion valid?" and that's totally understandable. I was in my promos for gold 4 at the end of the preseason, and I main support. Though the sample size isn't that large right now (10 games) I currently have an 80% win rate as Alistar as well as a 7.0 KDA exclusively playing support. My summoner name is Anti Dpresnt for anyone who doesn't believe me.

Right now Alistar is one of my favorite supports. Though there are other tanks that you could play in that role such as Braum, Leona, or even Blitzcrank, I feel like Alistar is king. In my opinion each of those tanks has a specific reason for being played. Braum is the most defensive of the three, providing a skill shot block and some defenses for his allies, while having a fairly strong and reliable turnaround. Leona is the premier support for engaging - she does it strong, fast, and with little counter play available. However, she is best utilized offensively. Blitzcrank, while being a strong champion, is not the best functioning tank in my opinion. His grab is amazing if you can land it reliably, and he can peel fairly well (though often trading his life in the process), but a lot of the time it feels like you are just the annoying friend screaming "PAY ATTENTION TO ME" as enemies often ignore you once your cooldowns are down and simply kill the squishy targets around you.

Alistar, however, is the best of all of these. His strength is in diversity, one of those buzz words that riot is always pushing. I think that his low popularity and win rate are due to people that don't understand him very well playing and simply always going for the headbutt/pulverize combo instead of actually thinking about what the best play could be. In terms of laning, generally I think that maxing Q is the best option because it is a CC ability that can reliably hit multiple people and engage/disengage. However, if you are against a lane such as Nami, Sona, or even worse, Soraka, you could max heal first to attempt matching the sustain those lanes have. Like Braum, Alistar can peel with the best, but utilizing his kit to push high dps enemies away from their target and keep those with less threat suspended in mid air. Once he has his ultimate, stopping cc and skill shots is a breeze, just face tank it and laugh as the 70% damage reduction and CC break make any attempt at initiation futile. Like Leona, engaging is no problem. There are many options available, such as flash pulverize and then headbutt the squishy enemy back at your team or just popping your ultimate and perhaps a righteous glory and just chase until they make a mistake and are locked up till death. Or - the epitome of Alistar mechanics - the E/Q combo. Well executed, this has the ability to keep an enemy around long enough for other champions with burst or CC to continue the assault. As it is, I believe that Alistar is one of the best tanks in the game, and certainly the best support tank all around. However, he sits at 4.58% popularity and 44.11% win rate so obviously the public, and perhaps riot, disagree.

Hopefully after reading all of that, you agree with me! Now comes time to talk about how I think his kit should be changed to make him even more competitive in the meta, and to help the King Cow keep up with any future supports that come out.

Ill start with the headline, Alistars W - Headbutt. As listed previously, I don't think that this ability is lacking anything and I feel that it has plenty of strategic diversity. However, after seeing that riot had changes on the PBE for it a little while ago, this got me thinking about this skill and the champion as a whole, and how he could be changed to fit in the current meta more strongly, but also increasing his strength solely for the support role. This led me to combine the current skill and future plans. On regular cast, headbutt should function exactly how it does now. But upon self-casting the skill, it acts sort of like a toggle. This causes the skill to be a skill shot with a slightly slower traveling speed that knocks all enemies encountered back, and can no longer pass through walls. While I like the skill shot idea, I feel like if that is the only change made to this skill, you lose SO much more than you gain and it would take away a lot of the reasons Alistar has a strong kit. However, combining the two adds many more levels of thought and capability to how you can use the kit as a whole. Though perhaps this could be too much strength in one skill, and if that were the case I would simply leave the skill as is.

Next, his passive. At first, I felt like **Trample ** was underwhelming. But the more I play the champion, the stronger I find it to be. Often after big team fights, when you are playing Alistar well you are either on the team that won distinctly, or the fight went even and you are one of the few people left alive. In the latter case, often you find yourself needing to regain some sort of wave control, and this passive combined with Pulvarize is actually one of the best wave clears I have found on a support, besides from playing AP morgana with her W high level. On top of that, Recently one of the plays I am most proud of is getting a dragon steal against the entire enemy team alone, while my team walked around the pit to clean up the fight. One of the reasons that I even was able to make this play was the added damage of Trample to the dragon after I got a 5 man knock up. This being said, I feel like it could use a slight buff/change. As it currently stands, Riots balance team didn't know how to go at first when all the big support changes happened and had to tune this spells ap ratio in order to not have him become dominant in the jungle. While I agree that Alistar could be a giant threat in the jungle and solo lanes if given certain buffs, I think I came up with a solution. Get rid of the AP scaling on Trample, and change it to a scaling based on Armor. Or perhaps a smaller scaling but on both armor and MR. This encourages alistar to be as tanky as he can be and best benefits a support Alistar, compared to a solo lane.

Q - Pulvarize This skill is glorious. No changes need to be made.

E - Triumphant Roar While I was thinking about changes, this is the skill that perplexed me the most. While I knew it needed some tweaks to remain relevant, I didn't think that it needed to be made into a new skill but I also understand that riot means for Soraka to be the premier healer of League. This is what I came up with. Lower the mana cost a little bit, and add a small (like 2-3%) movement speed buff that stacks up to 5 times - but with a slightly lower duration than the no cooldown-reduction cooldown of the skill. These two changes make the skill more useful, while also making the cooldown reduction per unit killed around alistar make more sense thematically and encouraging the summoner to think more about the mana expenditure in lane.

R - Unbreakable Will Like Q, this skill requires no changes to be fantastic.

Hopefully If you have made it this far, you agree with my thoughts on the champion, or have had your view changed from thinking Alistar is trash to thinking he is treasure. If not, please share what you would change! hopefully we can get some Rioters to see this and consider the changes. Or even get someone like Aphromoo to see it!

Thanks guys.