[2.1] Full in depth alistar guide

Soraka is one of the easiest to deal with simply because she does not have strong disengaging tools against Alistar.

Alistar actually counters blitzcrank REALLY hard. But a good blitzcrank that can hook your adc is something to be fearful of. Always keep an eye on blitzcrank's movement so he doesn't catch your adc. If you can do that you can easily win the lane. 

Honestly, I think nami is easier than janna simply because she has fewer disengage tool than Janna. If you can engage on a nami that uses her Ebb And Flow to poke, you win. She doesn't do that well against hard engage and she only has her ult to disengage which alistar can counter with his ultimate. You still have to respect her poke but I feel that its much easier than Janna due to Janna ultimate being a huge counter on a hard engage. 

Lux is easy because lux skills are mostly used for poking. As long as she use her Light Binding to catch or try to poke. You can easily engage the very next second. You will rarely lose against a lux after 5 because your ultimate counters her Light Binding and can soak out most of the burst she has for her combo. Typically if you respect some of her pokes and engage when her cc is down, you will always win lane.

Ehh... malphite is basically an alistar except his combo comes at 5. You will always win this lane because your ultimate counters his and you can engage way earlier than him. As long as your adc doesn't int you generally will win this match up. If he go full ap, you will win all the way because he cant soak any damage but if he go full tank you will also win in mid-late game because you are tanking too and you provide more for the team with your cc than he does which is only his Unstoppable Force .

Sona is actually easy to counter because Sona does not have any hard cc except for her Crescendo . As long as you can engage her after she use her Aria Of Perseverance and the shield is gone, you will always win trade. At level 5, every engage you do will usually be on your side because your ultimate counters her by cleansing her ultimate stun. Just like Raka, she is quite easy to counter but she is definitely stronger in a teamfight which she could provide heals and movement speed. Catch her team or her offguard with a strong initiation and you will always win the fight. 

Janna is annoying. She can poke you, disengage with her Monsoon and basically be a nuisance. But Janna has a huge weakness, she is squishy. When a Janna starts to use his skills to poke you esp when she use her Howling Gale , engage immediately after that. As janna does not have any disengage tool after that except for her Monsoon , she will always lose trade if she does not respect you. Also, when she use her Eye Of The Storm , engage on the adc after the shield wears off as that means her adc is very vulnerable during this time. Do not go too hard tho as she can still kite you with her Howling Gale and Zephyr with her adc but sometimes you can easily burn a summoner or two if your adc reacts well enough. As long as you come out with burning either their summoners or her ultimate, you win trade because her ultimate cool down is way longer than your Pulverize Headbutt combo

Why is Annie medium you would ask? Simply because a strong annie and a strong adc is a very scary thing. When they hit 5, annie power spike is one of the strongest in game as a support and if she can pair with a strong ADC that can chain cc together, your adc will melt within seconds. An alistar is useless if your adc is going to die everytime an annie ultimate is up, so how do you counter that? Just engage on annie and the adc once you hit lvl 2. Annie is a strong sp but annie cannot take any damage pre 5 or she will feel very weak. In order to not let her spike, engage on both annie and/or the adc but also respect her poke at lvl 1 so you will always win trade after that. If you could apply enough pressure, you can easily zone out both of them and hit your level advantages first and whenever you had a level advantage spike like level 3 or 5, engage immediately and apply even more pressure so that she doesn't become strong. If annie and the adc does not get ahead in laning phase, you generally won the game because you will be way stronger than annie support in late game.

Seraphine is a lane bully against you. A good seraphine can easily zone you out at lvl 1 and prevent any hard engage if she respects you at lvl 2 onwards. But all champion has a weakness and that is when Stage Presence is down. When her passive is down when she use her skill, she will always be weaker than you who has your combo up. Be it her High Note or Beat Drop that she used, her damage source will be much weaker than you and your ad and you can easily win trade against your laners. In teamfights, respect seraphine as she can start poking and healing whenever she have to and always watch out for her ultimate to get ready with your ultimate counter. ALWAYS engage first if you can find a crucial target (adc, mid  or even her) because when you do the initiation first, you are controlling the tide of the fight. Waiting around her and letting her team and her poke is suicidal because she can heal back and support his team whereas you cant and when she finds an opportunity to engage on your team, most of the time you will find that you are too late to react to save your teammates. As long as you can initiate first, you would apply all the pressure on you and elevate more breathing space for your team to kite around and play around you.

Braum is actually a hard match up because Braum can easily babysit his AD with his Unbreakable . And when you hard engage on the opponent, a single Unbreakable from braum will easily counter both you and your laner's damage and you can lose easily. However, that does not mean that this lane is a lost cause because alistar can actually win braum at certain point of time. You have to bait out his Unbreakable in order to win and that has to come with your ADC applying pressure for you. Braum is a strong peeler but he cant engage at all. So when your adc is applying pressure, sometimes braum will be forced to use his Unbreakable to protect his adc. That is when you HARD engage during this short window to win trade. Also, after laning phase it is important to catch players because you are a strong engager. By catching players off, you will always have a strong headstart in objective fights because it will be 5 v 4. However, never over engage and chase a braum as you will always lose out when they start kiting against you.

Lulu is annoying. Like really annoying. She is worst than braum because she can babysit the adc alot. However, you can always exploit a bad lulu player easily. Whenever lulu uses Help, Pix! on adc to apply pressure or just shield for fun, engage after that as you will always win trade. If she starts to apply alot of pressure at level 1-2 because a good lulu player will do that, respect her and dont get poke. As long as you don't get poke and somehow get some exp, you will always come up ahead. When a lulu uses her Help, Pix! and poke you with her Glitterlance that's the best time to engage because she only have her Whimsy polymorph left which is useless against an alistar who has combo and his Trample still stacks on champion when polymorph. Dont chase too hard as lulu can easily punish you for that with her ult and kite you back. Respect her and play safe at laning phase while also catching her if she get out of position or the ad is out of position and she is nowhere near to help (went to ward etcetc). In teamfights, as long as you can catch her off guard and force her ultimate on herself, you win. If your team has very strong ultimates like malp,kennen ori and you can combo, you easily win because lulu sucks at teamfights which are very heavily stack with cc. She is also less tankier than braum so this is one thing you can exploit her for when she is out of position to ward. Same idea as braum but respect her more because she can poke more.