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.
Swain's passive is very potent if you are immobilized. Make sure to be extra careful around enemies who have immobilizing effects.
Buying an item with Grievous Wounds will make Swain much easier to kill during his Demonic Ascension.
High mobility counters all of Swain's basic abilities: Death's Hand does more damage the closer he is, Vision of Empire has a very long delay and Nevermove must start returning back to him to be dangerous.
The stat comparisons provided here feature some significant Alistar against Swain matchup stats that may help us grasp the distinctions between the pair. Alistar’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Swain’s KDA ratio of NaN, highlighting that Alistar may be more central to his team's team fighting effectiveness than Swain..
Alistar usually has a significantly smaller longest kill spree than his counter does. Commonly, he receives a similar amount of damage to Swain. This typically indicates differing health capacities; however, it can also illustrate that the champ with higher HP has less agility and thus is not able to escape additional damage when poked or engaged.
Both League of Legends champions are great champions. Both champs have their pros and cons. In the game's current meta, Alistar usually loses when facing off against Swain, with a 45.2% win rate. Thus, Alistar makes a bad counter for Swain.
While Alistar does have a much lower winrate than Swain, when on opposite teams, Alistar also has a lower learning curve that makes him a less challenging champion to pick up and master. You should be very concerned when picking Alistar into Swainas his relative depth means that you may not be able to unleash his full potential without a lot of practice beforehand.
Furthermore, Alistar also has a lot of utility and CC, a similar amount to Swain. This makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when facing champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there isn't a single best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Alistar vs Swain matchups, Swain is the better champion with a much lower win rate, less champion complexity, and a similar amount of utility to help out your teammates during late stage team fights.
Alistar is a terribly counter to Swain. You will do well by focussing your strategy on increasing your gold and cs and destroying objectives. If you are able to do that, you should hold your own as Alistar against Swain.
To learn all of the intricacies of Alistar to counter Swain during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to pick up a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and stats presented above, you should grow your win rate significantly and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Alistar on average racks up less CS as Swain. Champions who typically don't get many minion kills typically don't need much CS to be valuable teammates, such as supports. These kinds of champions are capable of scaling well off of their abilities and first items alone. Yet, champions with large amounts of CS, such as hyper-carries, often have to have several high cost items to be effective. In either situation, try to do better than the values reported here to do well.
The best items to focus on in your Alistar versus Swain build include Locket of the Iron Solari, Thornmail, and Bulwark of the Mountain. When Alistar incorporated at least these three items in his build, he performed a lot better vs. Swain than with most other typical counter builds. In fact, Alistar boasted an average winrate of 45.2% when countering Swain with these items in his kit.
To have the greatest probability of annihilating Swain as Alistar, Alistar players should use the Glacial Augment, Hextech Flashtraption, Minion Dematerializer, Cosmic Insight, Bone Plating, and Unflinching runes from the Inspiration and Resolve rune sets. Out of all the runes we have analyed for Alistar vs Swain matchups, this order of runes yielded the highest win rate. In fact, these runes averaged a 45.2% winrate overall.
If you want to see Alistar vs Swain tips and matchup stats and build suggestions for a a particular rank, please select one from the selection menu displayed above. At first, the stats and guides displayed are calculated using every game with data with these champions.