Alistar!

Holy crap! I just got my first win as Alistar! After countless games of getting completely owned by enemy Alistars, I decided to try him out a couple weeks ago... And I failed. Miserably. 0-5.

However, today I decided to get his Longhorn Alistar skin and give him another try. It went wayyy better than it previously had and I got my first win as him.

I realized that my problem had been that I had been building him for AP burst, but never building his damage spells - however that's not even a good idea. So I went Desolation Runes, Flat Armor Seals, some defense glyphs? and a Fortitude and 2 Swiftness Quints for my rune page; and then 1/8/21 on masteries (smite in offense cause I was jungling, strength of spirit in defense, and typical 21 Utility). Then on items I built Philosopher's Stone, Heart of Gold, and Merc's Treads initially with a bunch of wards, then built a Trinity Force. My original plan had been to just build the Sheen and then build armor and/or MR items and finish the TriForce later, but we were doing so well and I needed my ganks to be stronger than for my sustainability to last. By the time I finished my TriForce, the enemy team had surrendered.

I was able to gank early and often. My early ganks did not result in kills, but they did result in the enemy team recalling and giving up position in lane - which is all I really wanted.

I placed meaningful and impactful wards on both sides of the river that saved lives and resulted in at least one kill.

I maintained level with the bottom lane (of course mid and top, the solo lanes, outran me), and that was awesome.

Overall, I was very pleased with myself and my performance. I finally got the stupid purple cow to work for me!