I can't seem to find answers that match up. Alistar is definitely a more tanky support, so he is different than ones like sona or Janna. I'm looking for runes that will help with his mana control, support, and tankyness.
Most of my games last till late game, so I would like runes that scale till then.
As a support, Alistar's money is very limited. It's typical to see rune setups that take advantage of his crowd control abilities as well as GP/10. A somewhat typical support rune setup is:
Note: it's best to focus one type of rune, even though I've listed several different options
Because Mark's focus on offensive abilities, and support's are less offensive, we choose a secondary trait of armor. For Seals, more armor or health/lvl makes a very strong tank and mana regen can help to spam abilities. For glyphs, cooldown reduction helps to spam abilities and magic resist/lvl makes a stronger tank. The GP/10 quints are important since supports tend to ignore minion kills.
Masteries are focused either in defense or utility. Philosopher's Stone and Heart of Gold are typical early items that compliment these runes.
A mix of the prior comments would be my suggestion.
As a support, you need GP/10 to do your job as warder and still contribute useful items to teamfights. Therefore, I strongly encourage 3 GP/10 quints on any support that intends to stay bot lane during laning phase. That said, if you're going to be a roaming/ganking/support Alistar MS quints combined with boots of mobility really increase your threat level throughout the game.
As alistar, you are best in lane early game with your unrivaled double cc. For this reason, I recommend flat mana per 5 seals to increase your early game ability to harass.
I do not recommend flat cdr glyphs, though, because the benefit received is not abusable due to your mana limitations. Instead, I recommend either more flat mana/lvl on glyphs, or perhaps magic resist/level to increase your tankiness late game.
I strongly disagree with the others recommending armor marks. Again, alistar is an early game aggressive support. Get magic pen to increase your kill potential early game. Getting your ad carry first blood - and perhaps more - is significantly more important than being slightly tankier mid game. Late game, the 9 armor from marks does little for you. Early game, 9 armor is more beneficial but if you play well and correctly their ad carry won't be hitting you - they will be too busy trying to recover from your double cc to be able to hit you. If you need armor marks to not die in early game, you should first try adjusting your play.
My setup personally is 3x Greater Quintessence of Avarice, 9x Greater Mark of Resilience, 9x Greater Seal of Resilience, 9x Greater Glyph of Warding which even are my standard support runes test them out :P good luck
Alistar is a tanky support that is especially aggressive during the early lane phase. However his aggression and ability to sustain this aggression depends entirely on his cooldown and mana regeneration. So these are the two areas that should be focused on with runes.
For Marks use defense marks. As a support, the main opposing damage should come in the form of physical attacks from the enemy AD carry. You don't really want to take anything offensive since as a support Alistar, dealing damage is not your job.
For Seals, I strongly suggest flat mana regeneration. You want to get flat mana regeneration because you want to optimize early game stats. Late game, Alistar has a lot less trouble with mana control.
For glyphs, focus on flat cool down reduction. Alistars main role in to essentially CC the enemy to protect your carry or to serve the enemy on a platter for your carry. Alistar's effectiveness is dependant on how quickly/often Alistar can do this.
For quintessences I would recommend health quintessences. If these are not available to you, then either additional cooldown reduction or mana renegeration will be great on Alistar.
Although these runes are flat stats instead of per level, it will still scale well into late game because Alistar should have no problem with mana in late game. As for cool down reduction, there are many support items that offer cool down reduction. In late game, you will achieve the max 40% cooldown without having the scaling cooldown reduction runes, if you build correctly (Revelry and Zeke's will put you at about 40%).
http://solomid.net/guides.php?g=16452 <-- that right there shows everything from masteries to what you should be building.
but it recommends, attack speed reds to jungle faster, armor yellows and magic resist per lvl blues with movement speed quints. movement speed quints to help you clear faster as well as get your ganks off smoother and get around the map easier. and it does work. alistar is a beast jungle if you do it correctly and get your ganks off. He is super scary.
I run flat armor marks and seals, flat magic resist glyphs and health quintessences. This lets you play more aggressively during your early levels. The strength of being aggressive in lane will depend on what carry you are laning with, since some carries are more aggressive in lane (for instance caitlyn, tristana, and miss fortune) whereas other carries are more passive during lane (such as vayne, ashe, and kog'maw).
If you're looking specifically for runes that are going to be strongest in a longer game, then you want to run armor marks, gold quints and seals, and scaling magic resist glyphs. Simply put, the longer the game goes the stronger that gold runes become, this simply isn't true of any of the other runes available to you. (except possibly death timer runes, but your game almost certainly is not going late enough to make them better than gold quints.)
I run Marks-Flat armor, Glyphs-MR per level, Seals- Mana Regen, Quints-GP10.
I like this set up gives me a little of everything.
It depends on the lane matchups and how you want to play. If you play as a kill lane, then you want extra tankiness: flat armor marks, armor seals, mr/level glyphs, MS or flat health quints
If however the lane is going to be a farm lane with little harass: flat armor marks, gp10 seals, mr/level glyphs, gp10 quints so you get the gold advantage
If the lane is going to be farm lane with lots of harass: flat armor marks, flat armor seals or mp5 seals, mr/level glyphs, flat health quints. In this case, you want to get your heal up faster to keep your ad carry in lane and farming. Save your headbutt for the knockback and pulverize if they dive your lane at tower.
These things depend highly on what AD carry you are supporting and their playstyle. If you have a hypercarry like vayne, you want to farm up until you get some levels (level 4) and brush control, however a good caitlyn, will just push the lane hard and force you to go defensive. A hypercarry like kogmaw on the other hand you want to just make it a farm lane, so don't think about kills unless the enemy goes full retard or you get a jungle gank.
