Your Alister-fu is very weak my son.

Allow me to explain, Alister is 100% through and through a master of teamfights he decides who dies and is excellent when you build CDR at locking down enemies that target your dps. He doesn't in any practical means deal much damage but more than makes up for it with his ult that is a cleanse, damage buff(tower pushing), and The tank button that lets you live at 25% hp even when fully focused by 5 enemy players which is proly stupid of them to begin with. Basically, pulverize + headbutt has numerous applications, defensive and offensive. Practice a bit more youll get it!

Alistar is very useful in a very different way than most champs. He has an AOE stun on a relatively short CD to most champs, a heal, and way to knock people away, and a "Not gonna die" button.

Basically you don't do much damage yourself. The way to play Alistar is you set enemy champs up to die. You do this by stunning them as they try to run or interrupt their ults, or knocking them away from their team and in to the heart of yours. Early laning I like to make the enemy waste their mana trying to kill me as I just power through and heal against all their attacks while using relatively little mana.

Playing Alistar like this, I have literally had an entire team run away from me. Were they in any danger of me killing them? Absolutely not. However the looming threat of being disabled and set up to be steam rolled by my entire team was something they had experienced time and time again that match.

Alistar is not a killer. He's the reason other champs can be killed.

Here is how you can be noticed in team fights.

1.Your the tank, you initiate fights for your team. Try pulverizing a carry or support and then headbutting him/her to your team. Flash can help catch people off guard.
2.Build CDR. Alistar has long CD, so its a great ideal to build some CD.
3.Sometimes you may want to save some of your skills after initiating for certain ultis such as katarina or fiddlesticks.

For early game, Alistar should try to gain control of one of the brushes. If an enemy champion tries to pass you, you can headbutt into the mountain. Then auto attack pulverize and auto attack. With a teammate helping you out, this will harass the enemy a lot. If you want to do some early game damage, you can buy a sheen and time out your skills. With the headbutt pulverize into the mountain combo, sheen will benefit you early game. Also you have four skills that can proc sheen, just with relatively long cd. However you shouldn't buy sheen every game. Alistar quick auto attack animation and heal makes early game a breeze.

And Alistar is tank, and most tanks aren't suppose be doing damage.

This will be somewhat repetative, but I will try to add things not yet in this post...

As alistar run flash/ghost... Yes you are a tank, but you have 0 initiation abilities. Without these 2 spells you are worthless as a tank unless someone walks up to milk your... ummm. wait I don't think you can milk those... I mean walks up to... shake your hand...

- You need CDR as him, oh wow thats been said, ok good.
- Grab an item that gives +5 gold, give priority to your Q after your ult, its how you can just barely farm as alistar.
- Grab some +3 boots or +5.
- Buy a sheen, its your main source of damage
- Defensive items
- Since you only spam your spells 1-2 times (2 being the absolute most) in team fights you usually don't need a high mana regen, but a moderate mana regen or moderate mana pool is a good idea.

Lane with a very high bursty CC champ, xin, ryze, irelia ect... flash to soon-to-be-dead enemy champ, stun punt to your teammate, they stun and rape. When your flash is up rinse and repeat.

Mid game should a team fight arise, flash, stun punt the squishy carry to your team. AOE ult? Punt them away...rammus walking away with carry stun him, rammus rolling into your team intercept with a punt. His applications are endless, the idea here is you can use his abilities both for offense and defense.

Late game, pound on turrets, use ult if necessary. The other team will just sit back and watch you kill their turrets. Should one of them try to stop you... (brace yourself for it... you know its coming) flash/stun/punt that soon-to-be-dead champion to your team. Rinse and repeat.

He is not the best tank, but he is far from worthless. Even without locket you can still do well with him, I just feel since many tanks can tank and semi carry, where as alistar can never carry only tank you should play him only with good teammates.

I don't play with alistar, but I have played with some really good ones and he's far from worthless. He can eat a lot of damage and his headbutt and groundslam can give easy kills. You do need Ghost or flash (maybe both) though. Butting an enemy squishy into range of your dps will nearly win a team fight. Not too long ago, I played with one who basically used this on twitch, and would save it just for when twich would come out of hiding.

There are some tricks I've seen with him too. Headbutt into a wall offers a short stun, so if you make it the headbutt ends at a wall with an enemy, you get one or two free hits. Followed up by a groundslam which also stuns (knockup, can't be reduced with MT), it's decent damage, especially if you have a DPS near by.

He's fun but fairly worthless. His initiation/abilities are very predictable. He's too slow to do much w/o flash, his cd's are long, he is a tank and isn't supposed to do that much dmg but his dmg is even lower than all other decent tanks. He has his ult to help him survive but when his ult is on cd is usually much squishier than other tanks who can actually farm some items. You might see someone play him effectively but you'll see him be mostly innefective far more often especially against people who know how to play against him. Most of the time he ends up being effective is because other players don't know how to play against him since he is barely played due to his innefectiveness.

He's barely played because the current style of gameplay doesn't allow it. Why play Alistar to give a little disruption, but add no damage, when you can play Amumu, Galio, Shen, Rammus, or Blitzcrank, cause the same amount of disruption (or better), and actually deal damage in the process.

Not to mention the vast majority of players want one thing: Lot's of KILLS!!!! KILLS WIN! If your K/D ratio is positive and full multiples of 2+, you're winning! Unfortunately for many others, this is the wrong focus to have, because kills don't win games, towers and the nexus do. Alistar is very effective at taking down towers, and in that respect, can win games... if every time you make a push you take a tower, you're doing pretty well, even if you lose the teamfight that ensued there.

The problem is that Alistar is actually a tank by the definition that he is incredibly hard to kill, and as a balance, does little for damage. All the other tanks are slightly easier to kill... but do a metric ton more damage in a teamfight. I still believe this is a fundamental flaw in the game as a whole. A team full of tanks can win games, simply because they outlast the squishy, more offensive built enemy. Gold for gold, the tanks will win, because they still dish out more than enough damage, sans any purely offensive items.

In my opinion, Alistar's greatest strength can only be accomplished with Flash, Pulverize, Headbutt... and then he goes and beats on the tower until the teamfight is over. Good Alistar players usually accomplish this well, but you always have to ask yourself if one of the other, more damaging tanks, would have done the job even better.

I think he either A) Needs a complete rework to become less reliant on flash for initiation. or B) Needs his damage output brought nearly up to par with other tanks, and as a consequence, have his survivability slightly nerfed.

Locket is a pretty good item on him.

This is a good video about how he's played:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgSKVePSnSk

Without Locket, I'm guessing you go for Shurelya's or maybe Soul Shroud.