Nothing more annoying than an all-one-type enemy and the team won't change their builds. I guess if your opponents are so dumb they're all physical or magic, then your team has to be equally dumb on average for the match to occur.
Alistar is a great example of how I play in kooky and unexpected ways that pique some and enrage others. I play a support Ali whose single purpose is to max out CC and healing with a good amount of tanking on top. I never hit "the combo" because that just lowers your total CC capacity, and if you have both ready, and you've built properly tanky enough to waltz in, then you're generally looking for a reverse combo (pulverize, walk around them, headbutt into team). This combo is pretty exemplary of the entire style of CC/support alistar: be a brick wall that slowly but inexorably spearheads the team into a turret kill. You don't chase, and the way you go in can barely be called initiating, since you're mostly just waiting for the enemy to do something you can CC and ruin.
10% summoner cooldown plus meki to start, along with smite in the lane to shoot down the recharge timer, and I can heal constantly and be almost un-harassable.
My skills are R > E > W > Q, except a level in Q at two. Maxing E keeps you and your buddy usually staying in the lane permanently except for ganks, voluntary shopping, or ally OOM. Q alone is a more useful skill than W alone for levels 2 and 3, but since we're setting up with Q, we conserve mana by putting all the power in W; if Q misses or we cant' get behind them for whatever reason, we didn't lose much mana. Q also increases by 15 mana per level, while W only increases by 10 per level.
Items are meki to tear, meki to evil tome, kindle, basic boots, then it varies a
lot based on situation. My priorities are visage, swiftness, and sunfire cape. If I'm primarily taking lane damage of only one type, I'll get visage (MR) or sunfire (armor) first. Otherwise, I usually finish my boots. After all these priorities are done, I upgrade the tear -> archmage, and then I fill the last slot with a blasting wand. By then, the game is usually over, but the goal with the and is to become a lich bane to beef up MR for the super-late monster AP scores as well as bump up my damage.
Play-wise, I'm always looking to max CC and healing. Any time you're not engaged in a full-blown balls-out teamfight, you've got to max your passive. Wait for the meter to run out before you cast another skill; this will also serve you well with a lich bane by maxing its procs. Later in the game when you're drowning in your own mana, you can heal -> pulv -> heal to chain your passive and bring down minions quickly. Just straight-up attacking minions and ignoring champions can boost your heal speed and win fights; if Q and W are cooling down, before lich bane, you have nothing to do to enemy champions other than passive and sunfire anyway. If you're being focused and your CC spells are on cooldown, the best way to tank is to heal as much as possible. Since you're a main tank who's run into the front, there's probably an enemy minion or two on your retreat path, and bringing them down with sunfire + a slap can keep you and the team you've run to going a little longer. I can't tell you how many times I've saved an ally's life when I was out of CC by slapping or smiting a minion to get my heal back. You can usually intelligently target minions in a teamfight just 1-3 times per match; don't do it blindly, but don't disregard it as part of your toolbox. Like summoner heal, ass-pulling extra HP for an ally can turn into a baited kill.
The amount of energy I've spent writing about that is mostly because other things with Alistar are pretty self-explanatory. The one thing I see Alistar players having the most trouble with is managing their heal. Not getting it at level 1 and maxing it first is ridiculous unless you're in an AT and have a really solid plan to try for first blood. Remember, Alistar's lane is push/farm, period. Alistar has serious last hit problems in the first couple levels, but if you have a carry who can bring them down, you can run interference with CC all god-damn day because any damage you take will be healed back. That means major free farm for your carry and total starvation for their lane. If the enemy gets desperate enough and becomes determined to drive you back, that can lead to easy kills, but you should never be worried about initiating. I've almost never laned Alistar with a carry and
not totally starved the other team unless their ganker focused hard on keeping our lane back.
So that's how I play Alistar. Sometimes people rage because they see you autoattacking minions in teamfights and are convinced you're "not helping", but haters gonna hate. My old strat before he was remade was even nuttier.
