author, his abilities only splash if you activate his w. for what it's worth =)

the only mana items i build on alistar are sheen and glacial shroud (en route to frozen heart). i know he blows through mana fast, but you shouldn't be spamming your q and w the whole time, especially mid game, when you might need them to escape a gank or protect a carry.

glacial shroud and FH give you cdr, mana, and reduce incoming damage from AD heroes. sheen gives him the extra damage he needs when pushing towers and tons of mana. cdr boots give him extra cooldown reduction, philo into shurelya's gives him extra hp and the AoE movespeed boost for positioning, FoN gives him extra health regen, extra movespeed, and tons of MR. beyond that, i get abyssal or quicksilvers for extra MR, rabadon's or (if they're stupid and keep focusing me) zhonya's for pure AP when we're creaming them, randuins if they're all ad, sunfire cape or warmogs if they've got tons of overall damage, and banshee's if they've got high burst or a fearing opponent.

edit: since i know someone's going to ask about zhonya's, i've used it a few times and here's my usual strategy. i pop shurelya's for team positioning, initiate into their base or at their tower with w, knocking a tank away and popping up local players. everyone immediately focuses me under the tower, so i pop zhonya's and let them blow all their abilities on me while my team follows up with their movespeed boost and gets a kill or two. THEN, i ult, as my q and w abilities have cooled down, and start doing my tanky business. the three times i've tried it we've gotten aces under their tower (once under both nexus turrets, with me sitting there eating them for breakfast) with no losses to ourself.

Nope, it's a passive, the attacks always splash, as soon as you unlock the W.

Hmmm, Sheen is interesting, still think I'd go for the chalice of harmony early on. And the ability I do spam is my E, Q and W are kept for when the situation dictates it, although I do use Q a lot against minions to help with the farming.

I should probably build a mastery page specifically for him, like I have on Janna.


But then again, on the chalice... maybe the philosopher stone is the better choice, as it helps with money issues and mana issues. I'd go for the Miracle however, as I have the nasty habit of forgetting about my active items. (If I could move them to 1 2 and 3 it would be simpler, but when an item is on 4 and 5 I hit R by accident once in a while and that sucks.)

My reasoning for Sheen is that it's way more offensive than chalice. It gives you a lot more burst damage which makes it easier to get kills in lane, and it gives you a good boost in mana. Philo Stone and Sheen really is all you'll need manawise.

you can move any item to a different slot simply by dragging it there.

seriously, though, the chalice is something that you just don't need. regen isn't as important on malphite as having a reasonable-sized pool and just being judicious about his abilities.

edit: author, did you say what your in-game name was?

Oh, wait, the chalice is for Alistar, for Malphite I usually go for armor and some mana regen, but I haven't tweaked everything with him.

Summoner name is Jeshen.

I tried the drag and drop for items, didn't work, maybe they are locked or something, will look in my key bindings next time I get a chance.

haven't gone negative yet with xerath

including in a pretty terrible loss. i think i like

Welp after a win streak in ranked I dual queue with my 1500 buddy and lose 8 out of 10 ranked games. Now we're both stuck in ELO hell. =(

i was under the impression that you can only queue solo or with a five in ranked games.

"Solo" queue is actually 1 or 2 people. As such your stats for playing with a friend are still saved under solo queue stats. And, as you've noted, there are 5v5s.

EDIT: Oh and one of those games our fifth chose Ashe after we already had a Kog, which prompted our GP jungle to leave at the start of the match, which further caused our LeBlanc mid to afk in the fountain; and after 6 minutes our terrible Ashe who missed two volleys (didn't hit ANYTHING) also afk'd in the fountain and me and my friend were literally 2v5. What made that even worse was the enemy team didn't kill the nexus until after 20 minutes.

EDIT2: On an unrelated note, I'm hoping/predicting sinful succulence Morgana will be in the next sale. Or at least soonish...

Ok, AP Alistar is good, but with CDR, I feel like I'm running out of mana too fast. What would you suggest as a mana regen item with that sort of approach?

I usually get around 50, but today during a game I couldn't keep up at all. At the end I had this selection of items:

Elisa's miracle, Morello's evil tome, Ionian boots of lucidity, Sheen, I was testing out Will of the ancient to help with life, and I was working on getting the deathcap at the end. I think I should just sell off the philosopher's stone instead of upgrading it, but I do like Tenacity.