Point of View: Alistar from League of Legends

Point of View is a column that I exercise my English and game design knowledge analyzing some games points - with a bit of critique and suggestions from outside. To start this new series of posts, I gonna use Alistar from League of Legends (LoL), since it's the first game that I became addicted and started to discover more about game design in my graduation (2011-13).

Alistar is a tank character with some crowd control skills and this great bull is one of the first characters from LoL. In the past, Alistar had a lot of functions and utility, but what happened with him to become one of the worst picks to use - hurt to say, but it's true.

Image: Riot Games

Nerfs

In the past, Alistar is a champion that could be used in many roles: support, mid, top, and jungle. After some changes in his skills, the scary tank becomes a support-only character.

In 2016, Alistar suffered some changes in his healing and passive. Before the update, he could cast the healing spell and the cooldown has less time when he's damaged, while his passive was a damage over time around him - it's a very good combo.

After the update, he lost attack damage in the ultimate and received a stun instead of healing, but the healing becomes passive with other aspects that he barely controls.

To best exemplify, I gonna use the jungle path:

Before the update: he could use the healing cooldown rection to best clear the neutral monsters and use his passive damage as a combo.

After the update: he can't heal himself and his new stun skill doesn't work with neutral monsters, while the new damage over time is weaker at the point you struggle to clear the first camp.

As you can see, that limited Alistar role. You think he becomes better support, but I can tell you that isn't true.

The new stun added an effect you need to stay close to the enemy for 5 seconds, but how you can do that if your stun has a high cooldown and stun for only 1.5 seconds with a very low movement speed? The answer is easy: you can't and usually, you need to change the target.

Better options

When you play with a champion you need to put in a balance what do you need in your game and, sadly, Alistar isn't effective in all aspects: tank, healing, protecting, and engage.

I'll filter all champions that can do a support role in the game and using basics filter you can see: many options that can do a lot of things that Alistar does, and they do much better.

Even if I stopped in the last filter that Alistar appears ("is good to protect"), you can look that have so many champions that do the same thing but better:

• Bard: better healing, safer distance engages, and good protector;

• Blitzcrank: can grab the enemies, silence who attacks, and can run from fights;

• Braum: can stop projectiles, good protector, and can start or stop an engage;

• Galio: good damage dealer, self-shield, quick engage, global presence, and good defender;

• Leona: massive amounts of engaging and boost self-resistance with low cooldowns;

• Malphite: natural tank, engages hardly can be stopped, and massive damage based on armor;

• Maokai: natural tank, good engage and many tools to stop enemies attacks;

• Nautilus: good engage, instant stuns, ranged fight starter, and self-shield;

• Pantheon: global presence, high damage, a shield that stop everything, and easy stun;

• Poppy: can stop hard engage, damage dealer, and natural tank mechanics;

• Rakan: incredible fast engage, can return to protect the carry, healing, and knock up;

• Sett: stun the enemies, don't use mana, deal more damage then everyone in this list, and can start or stop an engage with one click;

• Shen: global presence, don't use mana, easy crowd control, can stop hit attacks and damager over health percentage;

• Tahn Kench: can turn the carry invulnerable, damage over health percentage, and global presence;

• Thresh: can grab the enemies, pull the carry from dangerous positions, and good damage and armor based on how many souls he grabbed.

As you can see, every champion in the same filtering point can do a lot of things better and easier than Alistar - or even do things he can't do.

The single point that Alistar is recognized is for being a playmaker, but if you look better what Alistar needs to do perfectly (positioning and timing), all the others do the same with a single click.

What would be a way to make him viable again?

Since Alistar is a tank with a focus on starting a fight and protects his carry, he needs to do this and receive good tools that compensate his inability to escape. With that on the mind, he could be changed in:

1. Faster stun in his E ability: doesn't make sense you need to stay near for 5 seconds near when your cooldowns are super high and you need to use two-three skills to do the same thing that others do in one. Scale this time to 5/5/4/4/3 could change a lot of things;

2. New healing mechanic: kill enemy champions could double the healing, with a new effect radius area with higher healing according to the distance;

3. Add attack in his ultimate: Alistar enters in a fight using all his cooldowns (W+Q+E), after that he needs to use his ultimate to stay alive and he can't do anything besides do basic attacks, this buff could give him a bit of damage;

4. Turn him viable in different routes: the point here isn't turning him in the best jungle or solo lane, but make him viable to do these things instead cut him to average support that does poorly a bit of everything. Do extra skill damage to minions and neutral monsters should help.

That's all I collected in some research and game design practice. I don't like balances with only nerfs, because you will reach the point that every champion is weak.

I would love to see what champion or game you would like to see in this column.

Best regards and drink water!