League of Legends - Alistar Guide

League of Legends - Alistar Guide
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League of Legends Alistar Guide

Pulverize

This ability allo Alistar to smash the ground to stun and damage the enemies with magic damage. The stun effect duration is two seconds. These two seconds give you precious time to damage your enemy or to run to safety. This is also a great AOE attack to stop enemies trying to push. If you time your attack right, it can lead to the spread of the enemy team. Let’s say say you manage to stun two members of the enemy team. The rest of the team will spread out and back off because they couldn’t push your lane all together. In a teamfight, it gives an opportunity to counter-push or to kill the two stunned enemies without moving or giving territory to the enemy. To summarize, your objective when using Pulverize should be to force the enemy team to spread. A good strategy is to chain the attack with the headbutt ability. Getting this skill should be your priority in a game as it is a great skill to get the first bloods and to avoid early ganking.

Headbutt

Alistar Headbutt

If you want to be effective when playing Alistar, you need to use the Headbutt skill correctly. Headbutt allows Alistar to deal damage and to knockback an enemy. This is really a great skill for harassing the other players. In fact, with mana boosting runes and items, this ability can be spammed without dangers. After upgrading the skill, it does great damage and allow you to push the opposing champions away from they’re minions. A good strategy is to knockback an opposite champion in your territory so the creeps and your towers can get a quick kill. If you want to harass the enemies, just use headbutt when they get near and drive them away from their creeps. It is a great skill to use with Pulverize. Simply use Pulverize to get an easy stun and then spam your Headbutt skill to get a clean kill. You want to get this ability just after pulverize as it will allow you to combine the two skills to make deadly combos.

Colossal Strength

Alistar Guide

Colossal Strength is a passive skill that allows Alistar to deal more damage to turrets. Usually, you want to avoid getting damaged by enemy towers. However, if you feel confident, Colossal Strength can be really useful to take enemy towers down early in the game. Walk to the tower, give it a few hits, take the aggro and then run back to heal. If you repeat it a few time and if your opponent is not very smart, you’ll be taking down the towers easily, getting xp from the creeps and will be to go help your teammates on the other lanes. If you opponent is smart, he will stun you. In both cases, you still damaged their towers.

Triumphant Roar

Alistar Guide

This skill is extremely useful for Alistar. Basically, it allows this champion to heal himself during battle. With some points in this ability, you never really have to go back to your camp to replenish your health. It also heals friendly players near you. An intelligent use of this skill combined with mana regeneration gives Alistar a great staying power in the lane. Get Triumphant Roar early only if you’re getting a lot of damage without being able to respond to it. Do not be afraid to invest skill points in it early, Triumphant Roar is not very effective in the first few levels.

Unbreakable Will

Alistar Guide

Unbreakable Will is a great skill that boost the physical damage of Alistar of 50% and remove 75% of the magical and physical damage Alistar is receiving. This skill is really great to take down towers, especially if you use it with the Colossal Strength ability. Getting this skill doesn’t mean you cannot think in teamfights. If you rush the enemy team, they’ll manage to take you down even if your skill if activated. A better solution is to wait for a good opportunity and to harass the enemy in teamfights while protecting your ranged friendly champions.

League of Legends Alistar Builds

The Tank Build

Alistar 4

With this build, you’re going to need to work with your teammates if you want to get some kills. Alistar Tank relies a lot on teamwork to be effective. This build is really easy to play but needs good communication between the members of the team. Always know where your allies are and what they’re doing. This will allow you to help them to push lanes in critical situations. If you want to get the most of a lane with Alistar Tank, choose a laning teamate with high DPS. For the Item, try to focus on items that offers you speed and survivability. Good examples of items to get would be Thornmail for Survivability and Mercury’s Tread for Tanking the enemy towers. Frozen Heart is also really great because it reduces skill cooldown and allow Alistar to spam it’s skill more often. If you’re more into running after opponents, you can use Force of Nature that gives you a high health regeneration and a movement speed bonus.

Skills Order:

  1. Pulverize

  2. Headbutt

  3. Triumphant Roar

  4. Pulverize

  1. Triumphant Roar

  2. Unbreakable Will

  3. Pulverize

  4. Triumphant Roar

  5. Pulverize

  1. Triumphant Roar

  2. Maxed Pulverize

  3. Unbreakable Will

  4. Maxed Triumphant Roar

  5. Headbutt

  1. Headbutt

  2. Maxed Unbreakable Will

  3. Headbutt

  4. Maxed Headbutt

Summoner Abilities

spell 214

spell 208

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spell 202

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Flash

The must-have Summoner Spell for Alistar. Flash is useful for the different combos, for escaping trouble and to hit and stun the enemies that are escaping trouble with flash.

Fortify

Fortify is great if you’re looking to pull off the powerful tower-related combo or if you’re looking to get easy team kills.

Ghost

Ghost can be useful to gain a speed burst to help your allies in need or to catch running enemies**.**

Alistar Item builds

Versatile Build

Normal

Begin the game by buying Faerie Charm (for mana regen). Get some gold on the line until you get enough to buy the Boots of Speed at 55 gold. Go farm some more and buy a Philosopher Stone and Upgrade your boots to Boots of Mobility. To add even more to your movement speed, buy Force Of Nature. Buy a Thornmail (+100 Armor) to get more resistant to physical damage and to be prepared for the end-game. If the game continues at that point, buy the Glacial Shroud and the Spirit Visage to get the most of Alistar.

  • Faerie Charm
  • Boots of Speed
  • Philosopher Stone
  • Upgrade to Boots of Mobility
  • Force of Nature
  • Thornmail
  • Glacial Shroud
  • Spirit Visage

Counter Physical Build Variation

physical

This is a variation of the Versatile Build to Counter a Physical Team. After buying the Philosopher Stone, go for a Ninja Tabi and a Warden Mail to get movement speed and a counter against physicals. You may want to upgrade your Warden Mail to a Randuins Omen to get the Slowing Ability(35% for 2 second) that is useful when getting chased. For the end-game, buy a Thornmail and a Sunfire Cap if you have enough coins.

  • Faerie Charm
  • Boots of Speed
  • Philosopher Stone
  • Ninja Tabi
  • Warden Mail
  • Upgrade to Randuins Omen
  • Thornmail
  • Sunfire Cap

Counter Casters Build Variation

Caster

This is another variation of the build to counter casters. After buying the Philosopher Stone, go for Mercurys Treads and Force of Nature. Get Spirit Visage and Banshee’s Veil to dominate the endgame. If you still have coins to buy some things, buy the Abyssal Scepter for your Heals and Upgrade your Philosopher Stone to a Shurelya’s Reverie``

  • Faerie Charm
  • Boots of Speed
  • Philosopher Stone
  • Mercury’s Treads
  • Force of Nature
  • Spirit Visage
  • Banshee’s Veil
  • Abyssal Scepter
  • Upgrade to Shurelya’s Reverie

League of Legends Alistar Strategies

Flash + Pulverize + Headbutt

pic2

Basically, this strategy involves using your Flash summoner ability, with your the Pulverize and the Headbutt skills. There are many uses to this combo. One is to Pulverize (stun) an enemy, walk away from your side and then headbutt him (knockback) towards your tower and your allies. You can also do this to knockback the main damage dealer into it’s zone in a teamfight. Another use of this great combo is to knockback the enemies champion into a group and then mass stun them with Pulverize. This leaves them vulnerable to your team and you can get quick easy kills. However, remember that Flash has a big cooldown so don’t plan your strategies with it every time. Learn to position yourself to use this combo without the use of the Flash spell to become more powerful and tactical.

Ghost + Pulverize + Headbutt + Fortify

It is a variant of the first combo. It is very very deadly in early game. Basically, the strategy is to ghost to gain speed, stun your enemy and then knock him back towards your tower. Once he is at tower range, activate your Fortify ability to boost your towers, attack him and knock him back if necessary to get a slick kill. The fortify spell can also be really useful to get kills when any opponents are near your towers. Be sure to keep an eye on the map!

Headbutt+Wall+Pulverize

If you knockback an enemy champion on a wall, it will stun him. Take advantage of that to deal damage and Stun the enemy again as soon as he regains control. It will frustrate your opponent and it is pretty effective and funny to use. It is also a great combo to prepare a gank or to separate a player from the team.

Easy Targets

These Champions are generally vulnerable to your stuns and are easy to kill with Unbreakable Will. Go for it when you see them to get easy kills.

  • Twitch ( Really easy to kill with Stuns, Use Headbutt to separate him from the team)
  • Shaco (Stuns, don’t rely on Headbutt)
  • Evelynn (Pulverize + Headbutt)
  • Ryze (Anything will do, Ryze has only short range abilities)
  • Nunu (Headbutt)
  • Fiddlesticks (Headbutt)

How to Farm with Alistar

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Many players say that Alistar is not good at farming. While it is not the better champion to farm, Alistar can easily keep up with the other champion by last-hitting enemies. Look for enemies that have low health and target them. Do not activate auto-attack and get behind the creep line. It is pretty easy to get those last hits as Alistar have one of the fastest hit animation in the game. If you want to clear and farm large waves of creeps, you can use your pulverize ability to stun and kill them with one blow.

This post is part of the series: League of Legends Champion Guide: Alistar

A champion guide to Alistar The Minotaur in League of Legends.

  1. League of Legends - Alistar, The Minotaur
  2. Alistar Guide - League of Legends