The more I use it, the more Randuin's Omen feels like the best piece of tanking kit you can buy. The effective mitigation on it is ludicrous, but the number of kills you feed your team from the slow adds up very, very quickly.

It also synergizes well with Alistar, who doesn't have much trouble making people hit him, and is able to make devastating use of positional advantages.

It's a nice easy build too.

the guide is cool. however since me being a support tank i buy Soul Shroud and Aegis to support my team. if they are dps heavy, Thornmail of course. i buy Guardian Angel just to be that more unstoppable. however if the enemy team sucks badly, ill just get Soul Shroud and Aegis and work on AP. its all situational. AP heavy? yah add banshee's veil somewhere in there. but you are already unstoppable with flash/cleanse/ultimate plus your items. having Guardian Angel is a good thing, at least for me, keeps me in the game, especially when teams know its gonna be tough to attack my team with me around so they'll attack me. i just refuse to die at all cost.

remember AP after being tanked out means more health for Triumphant Roar.

certainly is tanky, and i'm glad you have good success with it. i would be interested in actually seeing your playstyle ingame, because i just want to gauge my eyes out, not having the CDR or mana regen i'm accustomed to. But thats just me, i do not believing in nocking any build that works for its user, so gratz! ; P

However, on worst items ever for Alistar, i would put warmogs -he farms too slow & has way too few kills to make it a wise investment, & give frozen Mallet a lot more credit. Why? Because of presence. If a team wants to ignore alistar between cd's fine, but if you want them to feel obligated to engage Alistar, frozen mallet does the job. Lets see how their squishy/fleeing members fare at ignoring His Tankiness when all he has to do inbetween CDs is auto attack, slowing them evey hit so your team mate can finish them off or you can simply bludgeon them to death. Like you said, its not about the damage, its about doing what comes natural to Alistar. Alistar has long cd's esp if you dont max his cdr, he is naturally tanky, & what can be more natural to any champ than auto-attack? so lets see... Frozen Mallet enhances his tankiness (+700 health), gives him battle presence between his cds, compensates in a way for his natural slowness by slowing his target, & doesn't need high AD or AS to be effective. Sounds like it fits Alistar pretty darn natural if you ask me! ; P but that said, while i think frozen Mallet is great on Ali, i would relegate it to slot 5 or 6... it is not at the core of his build.

Anyway, very nice guide, & engaging. It made me think deeper about how alistar works, & i appreciate that because Ali is my man! Aint no other man but hIm!!! ; P

I hate it when people ask rhetorical questions every other sentence. Don't believe me? Ugh.

Great guide, I love playing Alistar as a tank, and hopefully at the least this will get people to understand him a little more so when they see him on their team they will cheer and dance knowing the enemy's day is about to be ruined.

I've always used Flash/Ghost with Alistar, both are great for initiating. With my group specifically we have a Jungle Udyr, and I take the solo lane. Usually by level 4, he has both buffs and I obviously have pulverize and headbutt which lands us an easy kill. One time I actually got a double kill solo vs a Soraka/Karthus lane at level 3, which is one of my favorite LoL moments in all of my life.

I noticed in your guide you don't mention using headbutt in a chasing application. Numerous times my team would have just won a teamfight (Aww yeah, Alistardom) and their carry is running away with 1/4 hp and their support is hanging behind them trying to block skillshots.

Ghost, headbutt the support, flash onto carry, Pulverize. Bam, your team can score an ace and take out 40 more towers.

Same application, two people chasing a teammate, one is low HP, get a free flash in with headbutt o n the higher health champion and pulverize the hurt enemy.

All very obvious, but it wasn't described in the thread.