Had fun with a few games with Alistar this past weekend.
I ended up doing some major wreckage with him using the standard support build. Here is how I built him.
Runes:
AP quints
MagPen reds
Mana/lvl yellows
MR/lvl blues
Masteries:
9/0/21 - support selection.
Start Dorans ring. Get philo stone as soon as possible. Get boots next. Get Heart of Gold and then Kage's Lucky pick next.
That's 3 GP/5 items that are all very useful for him. Especially in a pure support build. With the AP from the runes, ring, and pick you'll do decent damage and heals with Alistar's abilities. I then complete the boots to Merc Treads AFTER I get the 3 GP/5 items. After that I build a sheen which I complete to lichbane.
Depending on how the game is going I then start to complete the GP/5 items. Reverie, Deathfire Grasp, and Randiuns Shield are all great items for him in the final build. You end up with decent base tank stats at around 140 ish armor and MR. A nice amount of CDR from DFG and Reverie. A good amount of AP at around 270ish. And still some decent movement speed which is where Alistar sucks cause hes slower than a real cow. You get armor from Randuins, MR and move from Merc treads and Lichbane, AP from Lichbane and DFG, Health from Randiuns and Reverie, and Regen from Reverie. You end up with 3 clickable activates that speed ou up plus any one on your team around you, a slow down that slows any enemies around you (which is easy to get close since you have a gap closer with headbutt), and a tank buster with DFG. The only other item I would consider is getting a deathcap after selling off the Dorans ring. However I never ever made it that far before the game was over. A good Alistar forces the game to be over quickly. His ability to tower dive with his ult means that the enemy can not use towers for cover as effectively. Which allows your team to push through the enemy defensively. Just headbutt + pulverize combo on a group of enemies hugging a tower. Let them all blow CC and ults on you. Pop your ult to break any CC and then laugh as your team mates clean up while you spam heal. Flash out way from the tower if you need to. It's seriously disgusting how Alistar makes towers damn near worthless to defend at.
Even if your CS score is low early on the GP/5 items and some assists keep you right on up there. Once you get the GP/5 items and sheen you can actually clear a minion wave with Pulverize and then Triumphant Roar with your passive. Which is great once the laning phase is over and you no longer have to baby sit the carry.
Alistar's headbutt + pulverize combo early is just to massively annoying early on if the AD carry in your lane is on top of it and follows through with what you are doing. You WILL get first blood at level 3 if your carry is paying attention. I think graves works the best because I had a graves dash in immediately as I headbutted in to unload all 3 buckshot on the target I would combo. It was instant kill at level 3 to anyone we did that to. It was insane.
Even later it is funny as hell as the foes you are laning against then start to tower hug. Once I hit 6 a tower doesn't stop me. Pop ult, Flash in, Pulverize someone up, then head butt them away from the tower. Let my carry finish them off as I run out of tower range with barely a scratch.
Alistar's main downside is right now he can't really kill anyone 1v1. They can't kill him either though if he has his skills up at least
