Alistar Discussion

Alistar is an aggressive support that excels at diving turrets and creating chaos in team fights with a kit involving hard cc with a damage reduction ultimate.

When I read Alistar's kit I always had to ask myself "What is Holding Him back?" nothing is wrong with Alistar at face value, but once you compare him with other supports: Leona, Sona, Nami, Janna, Thresh, It becomes more apparent: Alistar is not unstoppable.

What's wrong with Alistar? He has CC, and some sustain and he is a strong diver. Why do I think he is a bad support champion?

Let's take a look at his skills and compare their effectiveness with other popular supports:

Alistar's Passive Trample is lacking. The only thing that is useful about it is its unit collision removal after casting spells. let's face it: 6 + (1 × level) (+ 10% AP) brings little to nothing during conflicts(compare Alistar's Passive with Leona's, or Sona's. Trample doesn't accomplish anything compared to the other passives )

Triumphant Roar targets allies giving the heal to surrounding creeps. This actively pushes the lane and causes your bottom lane to be over extended. This would be okay if Riot didn't continue to buff turrets making them near impossible to take early. Pushing turrets early is not a viable strategy anymore. Thanks Riot for patching out diverse play. Since Alistar can't push turrets he should try to force conflicts.

Hint: Alistar is easy to kite.

His Ultimate is effective for soaking up turret damage to a point. If Riot hadn't buffed turret damage recently (making diving near impossible at early levels; thanks again) Alistar might be even better at what is near impossible to do. Even though Alistar's ultimate is useful under turret it does close to nothing in small skirmishes outside turret range Experienced players will not focus Alistar ever Alistar will just get kited if he doesn't have movement advantage.

I do realize that I'm pointing out everything that could go wrong in a game as Alistar and not balancing the bad with good. Alistar is very good aggressive support when against people who aren't experienced with the bottom lane. He punishes those who make positioning mistakes and can win a fight when given the opportunity. But only when given the opportunity.

Summary: Alistar is an Aggressive support with a kit that at this moment get's punished by experienced players for playing aggressively. It has gotten even worse with the recent buffs to Trinity Force. My solution if it makes sense is to remove the damage from Alistar's passive and ultimate to replace it with movement speed.

So his passive would look something like:

After casting a spell, for 3 seconds Alistar ignores unit collision and gains 30 +(1 x level) movement speed. If an ability is cast during the duration the passive is refreshed.

And his ultimate would look like this:

Alistar roars, removing all crowd control effects on himself. For 7 seconds afterwards, he gains 20% / 25% /30% bonus movement speed and takes 50% / 60% / 70% reduced physical and magic damage.

These movement speed boosts would allow Alistar to force engages when he normally wouldn't and would all-round reduce the risk of picking him.

I want to hear feedback from you guys And Riot