Anyone who has played Alister has likely noticed that he has the potential to be an amazing healer if he wasnt such a mana sponge. This makes the solution fairly obvious I think: Alister needs more mana regen. With this in mind, this guide is really intended for people who are at least somewhat familiar with the character.
Seems silly for a tank, but stacking mana regen runes and going into utility masteries really will make you stand a cut above the rest amongst other alisters.
Masteries: (in order by level attained)
1/1 menders faith (this will be the only one in def. the rest go to utility)
3/3 perseverence
1/3 good hands
4/4 awateness
3/3 meditation
1/1 Greed
3/3 quickness
another 1/3 into good hands (making it 2/3)
3/3 intelligence
max good hands
1/1 presence of the master
As i am currently only SL 18, i havent figured the masteries any further than that. Will update another time if i figure it out.
Runes:
All the +MP regen/5 per level that you can get your grubby hands on. Blue/Red dont have these runes so you can stack whatever you like in those (I personally went nuts and filled the whole board in normal mana regen and mana regen per level, and it seems to work pretty well oddly enough)
Spells:
Heal + Promote
Items:
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS start with the meki pendant, and follow it up by upgrading to the chalice of harmony when you need to port back, or accidentally get killed. This will give you the little bit of early magic resist that i find alister needs, plus the ability to drop pretty much unlimited heals as the game progresses.
Second, I usually go for the warden's mail, and if you dont have the money for it, grab the chain mail/ cloth armor that you need to build it first. This early on, alister having this much armor and magic resist makes him more dangerous than people realize. Ninja tabi is also a good second buy, or you can do it third.
After these 3 it should be easy enough to figure out where to go. My 4th item is usually Phage -> Frost Mallet, but i have recently taken a liking to using the thorn mail. (Alister at level 12+ with these items starts taking so long to kill that your opponents normal attacks will end up going back and ripping them down 25 to even 50% of their health (especially effective against ashe and teemo in my experience and really anyone who does a lot of focus on normal attacks and attack speed)
Play Strategy
First and foremost, you are a tank, so you should really never go soloing. This build for alister is really meant to enhance your teammates, and while you can handle things alone, youll find that when youre the only one doing damage that you leave something to be desired.
Spell order
First skill i reccomend you get is mighty roar. Coupled with your summoner spell heal, this will give you a huge advantage at the start of matches, especially when your opponent is trying to put small dents in you and your teammate with quick ranged attacks or attempted hit and run melee attacks. With so much healing and mana regen, you will very quickly notice that while you stay at full health and mana, and your teammate stays at full health, you opponents health bars will be slowling dwindling, giving you a very easy gank opportunity at level 2 or 3 for anyone who is just a tad too aggressive.
At level 2, grab your ground slam, and then level 3 grab headbutt. Once you have all 3 ablities i would reccomend getting mighty roar to at least level 3 before you start beefing up your other stuff.
Play strategy (Really youll find with this build and strat that you may not get many kills, but i typically walk out of matches with 4 or fewer deaths (usually 0-2) and upwards of 15-20 assists, and 3-6 tower kills per game.)
Play strategy is very heavily based off of mighty roar. By keeping your units up for extended times, you can build up 2, 3 or even 4 waves of minions behind you. Tossing a promote on one of the units when you get a huge group makes you a tower crushing machine.
When you get these huge groups to a tower, go in and start bashing the tower. Most opponents in this situation will make the huge mistake of thinking that youre vulnerable because youre in front of their turret. What they wont realize is that with these 2-4 mob groups (promoted unit optional) when they decide to tap you, will will be drawing the anger of all of these mobs onto themselves. it only takes a second or 2 for someone to start getting very worried about the 15 odd minions ripping them up, forcing them back. Meanwhile, you, healing constantly, and being a tank in general, can stand there and take the beating from 2 people for a while and not responding, and just ripping down their turret.
Even if their reaction is to go after your minions, mighty roar AOE heals, which makes taking the minions down very hard. Once you have this going it is really a lose lose situation. This is usually the part where people start raging at me and my partner, getting overly aggressive, and eventually dying.
(Another great part about AOE healing minions so often and building up such huge groups is that you will continue to make normal exp, meanwhile noticably slowing your opponents leveling.)
Some important things to remember when doing this strat
1. Cast Mighty Roar a lot. You will regenerate the mana you spent on it in no time at all, so dont be stingy.
2. Youre a tank. A healing tank even. If youre not playing extremely defensive, youre doing it wrong.
3. Rely on your teammates and minions for damage. Thats not to say that you shouldnt sieze any opportunity to help move the damage along when you can, but really, stunning someone with groundslam and then positioniong yourself so that you can push them into an army of minions and allies will kill them substantially faster than anything you could do.
4. Alister is an escape artist. With so many heals, stuns and knock backs you can save so many lives. See that teemo over there running from enemies? Run over and ground slam them, giving him time to escape. See that (anyclass) fleeing with almost no life from that guy? Push that guy back, and keep him away until you can heal. You should be easily durable enough and have enough heals to be able to make to a tower or other teammates even with a bunch of enemies beating on you.... most of your allies cant. I get thanks from usually at least 1 person on my team at the end of a match for saving their life 4 or 5 times.
Seems silly for a tank, but stacking mana regen runes and going into utility masteries really will make you stand a cut above the rest amongst other alisters.
Masteries: (in order by level attained)
1/1 menders faith (this will be the only one in def. the rest go to utility)
3/3 perseverence
1/3 good hands
4/4 awateness
3/3 meditation
1/1 Greed
3/3 quickness
another 1/3 into good hands (making it 2/3)
3/3 intelligence
max good hands
1/1 presence of the master
As i am currently only SL 18, i havent figured the masteries any further than that. Will update another time if i figure it out.
Runes:
All the +MP regen/5 per level that you can get your grubby hands on. Blue/Red dont have these runes so you can stack whatever you like in those (I personally went nuts and filled the whole board in normal mana regen and mana regen per level, and it seems to work pretty well oddly enough)
Spells:
Heal + Promote
Items:
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS start with the meki pendant, and follow it up by upgrading to the chalice of harmony when you need to port back, or accidentally get killed. This will give you the little bit of early magic resist that i find alister needs, plus the ability to drop pretty much unlimited heals as the game progresses.
Second, I usually go for the warden's mail, and if you dont have the money for it, grab the chain mail/ cloth armor that you need to build it first. This early on, alister having this much armor and magic resist makes him more dangerous than people realize. Ninja tabi is also a good second buy, or you can do it third.
After these 3 it should be easy enough to figure out where to go. My 4th item is usually Phage -> Frost Mallet, but i have recently taken a liking to using the thorn mail. (Alister at level 12+ with these items starts taking so long to kill that your opponents normal attacks will end up going back and ripping them down 25 to even 50% of their health (especially effective against ashe and teemo in my experience and really anyone who does a lot of focus on normal attacks and attack speed)
Play Strategy
First and foremost, you are a tank, so you should really never go soloing. This build for alister is really meant to enhance your teammates, and while you can handle things alone, youll find that when youre the only one doing damage that you leave something to be desired.
Spell order
First skill i reccomend you get is mighty roar. Coupled with your summoner spell heal, this will give you a huge advantage at the start of matches, especially when your opponent is trying to put small dents in you and your teammate with quick ranged attacks or attempted hit and run melee attacks. With so much healing and mana regen, you will very quickly notice that while you stay at full health and mana, and your teammate stays at full health, you opponents health bars will be slowling dwindling, giving you a very easy gank opportunity at level 2 or 3 for anyone who is just a tad too aggressive.
At level 2, grab your ground slam, and then level 3 grab headbutt. Once you have all 3 ablities i would reccomend getting mighty roar to at least level 3 before you start beefing up your other stuff.
Play strategy (Really youll find with this build and strat that you may not get many kills, but i typically walk out of matches with 4 or fewer deaths (usually 0-2) and upwards of 15-20 assists, and 3-6 tower kills per game.)
Play strategy is very heavily based off of mighty roar. By keeping your units up for extended times, you can build up 2, 3 or even 4 waves of minions behind you. Tossing a promote on one of the units when you get a huge group makes you a tower crushing machine.
When you get these huge groups to a tower, go in and start bashing the tower. Most opponents in this situation will make the huge mistake of thinking that youre vulnerable because youre in front of their turret. What they wont realize is that with these 2-4 mob groups (promoted unit optional) when they decide to tap you, will will be drawing the anger of all of these mobs onto themselves. it only takes a second or 2 for someone to start getting very worried about the 15 odd minions ripping them up, forcing them back. Meanwhile, you, healing constantly, and being a tank in general, can stand there and take the beating from 2 people for a while and not responding, and just ripping down their turret.
Even if their reaction is to go after your minions, mighty roar AOE heals, which makes taking the minions down very hard. Once you have this going it is really a lose lose situation. This is usually the part where people start raging at me and my partner, getting overly aggressive, and eventually dying.
(Another great part about AOE healing minions so often and building up such huge groups is that you will continue to make normal exp, meanwhile noticably slowing your opponents leveling.)
Some important things to remember when doing this strat
1. Cast Mighty Roar a lot. You will regenerate the mana you spent on it in no time at all, so dont be stingy.
2. Youre a tank. A healing tank even. If youre not playing extremely defensive, youre doing it wrong.
3. Rely on your teammates and minions for damage. Thats not to say that you shouldnt sieze any opportunity to help move the damage along when you can, but really, stunning someone with groundslam and then positioniong yourself so that you can push them into an army of minions and allies will kill them substantially faster than anything you could do.
4. Alister is an escape artist. With so many heals, stuns and knock backs you can save so many lives. See that teemo over there running from enemies? Run over and ground slam them, giving him time to escape. See that (anyclass) fleeing with almost no life from that guy? Push that guy back, and keep him away until you can heal. You should be easily durable enough and have enough heals to be able to make to a tower or other teammates even with a bunch of enemies beating on you.... most of your allies cant. I get thanks from usually at least 1 person on my team at the end of a match for saving their life 4 or 5 times.
