Using Pulverize can allow you to establish better positioning for Headbutt.
Using Flash can allow you catch your target off guard to knock them back into your allies with Pulverize and Headbutt.
Move Speed is very important on Alistar. Consider which boots to buy carefully.
Save an interrupt ability for when Janna uses her ultimate.
Listen for the charge up sound on Howling Gale in case Janna is trying to hit you with it from off screen or from brush.
Janna's at her strongest when buffing another ally. If you can harass her ally, it will weaken her ability to fight you.
The stat comparisons shown on this page feature several significant Alistar against Janna matchup statistics that may help us distinguish the differences and similarities between the two. As an example, Alistar’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Janna’s KDA ratio of NaN, highlighting that Alistar may be more central to his team's team fighting effectiveness than Janna..
Alistar often has a similar longest killing spree as his opponent does. Typically, he takes more damage than Janna. This often reflects differing health capacities, yet it can also indicate that the champ with more HP has less mobility and thus is unable to kite away from additional damage when poked or engaged.
Both League of Legends champs are great. Both have their pros and cons. In the game's current meta, Alistar usually loses when facing off against Janna, with a 44.7% win rate. Therefore, Alistar makes a bad counter to Janna.
While Alistar does have a much lower winrate compared to Janna, when on opposite teams, Alistar also has a greater difficulty level that makes him a more time consuming champ to pick up and master. You may get destroyed when picking Alistar into Jannaas his relative depth means that you may not be able to reach his full potential without a lot of practice beforehand.
Moreover, Alistar has a very large amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Janna. This often makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when fighting champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there is not a single best champion overall in League of Legends, in Alistar vs Janna matchups, Janna is the better champion with a much lower win rate, similar champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your team members during teamfights.
Alistar is a garbage counter to Janna. Make sure you focus your play on maximizing your gold and cs and clearing objectives. If you can do that, you should be able to stand on your own as Alistar against Janna.
If you would like to learn all of the intricacies of Alistar to counter Janna during both the early game and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to pick up a few extra tips and tricks for this matchup. If you mind the build and stats displayed above, you will increase your win rate by a lot and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Alistar most often picks up more CS compared to Janna. Champions who typically don't get much CS typically don't require much CS to be effective, such as support champions. They are able to scale properly off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champions with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, often need several high cost items to be effective. In either case, try to exceed the values displayed here to do well.
The best items to prioritize in your Alistar versus Janna build consist of Locket of the Iron Solari, Thornmail, and Bulwark of the Mountain. When Alistar included at least these three items in his build, he performed much better when facing Janna than with most other commonly used builds. In fact, Alistar had an average winrate of 44.7% battling Janna with this build.
To have the highest probability of annihilating Janna as Alistar, Alistar players should use the Aftershock, Font of Life, Bone Plating, Unflinching, Hextech Flashtraption, and Cosmic Insight runes from the Resolve and Inspiration rune sets. Of all the rune builds that we analyzed for Alistar vs Janna battles, this combination of runes resulted in the greatest win rate. In fact, these runes provided a 44.7% win rate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to beat Janna as Alistar are displayed for all ranked divisions. If you want to filter the stats and builds to an individual skill level, you can use the selection menu earlier on the page.