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.
Xin Zhao is a powerful initiator with both his charge and ultimate dealing damage to all units around him. Try having your team stay spread out until he's used his ultimate.
Xin Zhao relies heavily on his Three Talon Strikes for damage and cooldown resets, so preventing him from finishing his combo will have a dramatic effect.
The stats shown on this page underscore some valuable Alistar vs. Xin Zhao matchup statistics that may help you explain the distinctions between the pair. As an example, Alistar’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is greater than Xin Zhao’s ratio of NaN, showing that Alistar may be more central to his team's team fighting potential than Xin Zhao. This observation is in large part fueled by the differences in assists.
Alistar usually has a significantly smaller longest killing spree than his enemy does. On average, he takes less damage than Xin Zhao. This typically indicates differing health capacities, but it can also indicate that the one champion has less agility and thus is not able to kite away from additional damage when poked or engaged.
Both League champions are great. Both champs have their pros and cons. In League's current meta, Alistar usually fairs equally well when taking on Xin Zhao, with a 50.4% win rate. As a result, Alistar makes an ok counter for Xin Zhao.
While Alistar does have a higher winrate compared to Xin Zhao, when they face off with one another, Alistar also has a much greater learning curve that makes him a more challenging champion to pick up and master. You still need to be cautious when picking Alistar into Xin Zhaoas his relative depth means you may not be able to unleash his full potential without a significant amount of practice beforehand.
Additionally, Alistar also has a very large amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Xin Zhao. This often makes her just as valuable during team fights, especially when fighting champions with a lot of burst damage.
While there is not one best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Alistar vs Xin Zhao matchups, Alistar is the better champ with a similar win rate, more champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your teammates during team fights.
Alistar is a decent counter for Xin Zhao. You will do well by focussing your gameplay on keeping up your gold and cs and taking out objectives. If you can do that, you should hold your own as Alistar against Xin Zhao.
To learn all of the intricacies of Alistar to counter Xin Zhao during both the lane and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should keep reading to learn a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you mind the build and tips presented here, you will increase your win rate significantly and be closer to League of Legends pro players.
Alistar typically picks up a similar amount of CS relative to Xin Zhao. Champs who typically don't earn many minion kills usualy don't need much CS to be effective, such as supports. They are capable of scaling properly off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champs with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, typically have to have a lot of items to be effective. In either situation, try to do better than the values reported on this page to do well.
The most important items to use in your Alistar versus Xin Zhao build include Locket of the Iron Solari, Thornmail, and Bulwark of the Mountain. When Alistar incorporated at least these three pieces in his build, he performed significantly better against Xin Zhao than with most other typical builds. In fact, Alistar boasted an average winrate of 50.4% battling Xin Zhao with these items in his kit.
To have the highest likelihood of crushing Xin Zhao as Alistar, you should equip the Aftershock, Font of Life, Bone Plating, Unflinching, Hextech Flashtraption, and Cosmic Insight runes from the Resolve and Inspiration rune sets. Out of all the rune combinations that we analyzed for Alistar vs Xin Zhao clashes, this sequence of runes resulted in the highest win rate. Moreover, these runes provided a 50.4% winrate overall.
If you would like to see Alistar versus Xin Zhao tips and builds for a a particular division, please choose one from the selection menu above. By default, the statistics and build suggestions displayed are computed using every match played with both champions.