I plan to play on HC and one thing really bothers me – Butcher. I met him twice while lvling at dungeons and was killed in a seconds. I know you can kill him even in blue gear, at low lvl, i’ve seen some videos, yeah it’s doable. The problem is: he appeared while i was fighting another pack, low on health and my skills were on cd. Even in theory i had zero chances even to run away. Both my engagements lasted for 2 seconds: he appeared and one shotted me while i was busy with other mobs. This fight design makes no sense on HC. You should always give some chances, obviously. Maybe it makes sense to let him out only when a player is out of combat or something like this. What are your thoughts?
3 Likes
hard X core.
better be ready to hit that macro esc leave game button or else…
whatchu gonna do, when then red and yellow goes wild on you brother?
2 Likes
My thoughts are that you get what you sign up for.
This Butcher mechanic is really cool and it makes dungeons much more enjoyable.
If you play HC you should find ways to escape the Butcher and play more carefully, planning each dungeon with the probability of him spawning every run you make.
The idea of playing HC is to defeat the game as it is on normal but without dying. HC does not mean that you play a watered down version of the game with less risks.
HC is not for everyone. It is for a very small percentage of people who want to prove themselves and everyone else that they can play the game without dying, without making fatal mistakes.
It is HARDcore.
12 Likes
Careful on HC as it isn’t just the Butcher that can delete you. There are a few high level rares out in the world that can just one shot you without you even realizing what happened. There was a giant level 25 tree in the west side of the start zone that had huge poison AOE globs and one exploded near me while someone else was fighting it. I wasn’t even standing on it just in the vicinity and I instantly died. There is also a mage guy in the mountains near the Khazra that I think is also level 25 who one shot while I was passing through.
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Yeah, I saw the guy, and I got one shot by it. The treeant summoned a whole bunches of poisonous spiders that explode, and also AOE poison on timing. Basically, if all of it explode at once, you get one shotted. If I have any grime to the butchers, then it is about how fast he is. Almost inescapable to kite and fight. Unless you are built with some broken stuff like double poisoning rouge or broken necro from the last beta….otherwise defeating him is not going to happen. That was just me though
Beyond the Hardcore mode discourse, I personally also don’t like the idea that the Butcher (but also other unique monsters as well) appears randomly out of nowhere, without a bit of lore to flesh it out, either before meeting him or after killing him, aside from, maybe, a line of text on the gear looted.
For such an iconic boss, it seems to me a bit of a wasted opportunity to give some juice to the game context, which itself is not overflowing with lore anyway.
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If you can get to a pillar or pylon it is fairly easy to kite the butcher around it so that he can’t do his charge attack at you. Just have to be lucky enough to be near something like that.
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He got me too, but I obviously didn’t plan good enough.
Normally I don’t use pylons in dungeons because I know he could show up but this time I clicked it and moved on and suddenly he came.
I died.
I always have a back up char and wouldn’t want a change to this feature cause I honestly think it is quite cool, especially on hc.
With my other char I killed him without pylon, but was lucky I killed trash before he came and had all my health pots and 2 extra near me and a health well next to me. Good thing it wasn’t a trap health fountain though lol.
My other two chars died during ashava fight (hc vet) because I accidently clicked on the chat and spammed numbers instead of my skills… 1. I didn’t dash and once I noticed I dashed into his bite.
That tree one shots everybody lol, but it’s really easy to kite. My favorite area in Diablo 4 beta was Kor Dragan, I love the music that plays there while fighting the mobs. I mistakenly cleared it and the boss as soon as I got level 20 so I was unable to cheese farm the bodies/caches/chests but I still ended up with 741 Attack Power on my sorc
I used that method or long hallways just running back and forth with my 2 charge dash + teleport sorc
you forgot to say wht u were on 0/5 potions as well or you cant klick in time?
I used to do this ALL the time while PvPing in WoW or other MMO’s. Accidentally hit return and wonder why nothing is happening and then realize I am typing a bunch of numbers in chat. 
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Basically, the three times I found him, he was just standing in the dungeon like any other monster, there nothing special about his spwan.
You just hear him say “Fresh Meat!” and he appears and charges you. As far as lore goes I would assume that anyone who played previous titles was familiar with him. He was a boss in D1 and D3 with lore explaining the type of demon he is and how he came into existence. He was super fun to play in Heroes of the Storm too back in the day.
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Re: The ‘mage guy in the mountains’ - I think I ran into this guy too shortly after dispatching a good-sized mob of inconsequentials that didn’t hit my health too hard but left me on the lean side of resources. After a whole slew of titles - things like Unstoppable, Unrelenting, Unyielding, yadda yadda yadda - one thing instantly stood out above all others - he was listed as 32nd level.
In a game where PCs and bad guys (and their minions) were generally capped at level 20, running unexpectedly - and, frankly, unwittingly - into this sort of damage-absorbing tankity-tank was a bit of a nerve-wracking eye-opener. At least with Ashava folks have an idea they’re in for a tangle. But a wandering monster like this… Oi…
On the positive side, retreat was always an option and he… err it… couldn’t teleport or go all stealthy/invisible. On the negative side, well… there’s all that tankity-tankness that took quite while to whittle down.
Indeed, the kiting went on for many, many minutes, all in an effort to regenerate a resource globe that seemingly took forever to refill (getting close to this guy for a melee attack that would quickly regenerate resource was obviously a really, really bad idea). Thank goodness Stamina is no longer a consideration!
Long story short: Hardcore isn’t for the faint of heart 
The mage in the mountain wasn’t that hard to kill. I killed him twice after my first meeting with him. He just caught me by surprise the first time and a fireblast one shot me. He dropped a pretty nice level 21 staff both times with fire, lightning, and cold bonus to damage.
The whole point of HC is the thrill that death might be around the corner right? Now you have a threat that can appear in dungeons at any time.
Also, there will be a scroll of escape for emergencies like this. I doubt he will be as scary when we are able to have a full build with good gear against him at higher levels.
Poor guy, blizzard help this guy to be a hardcore player.
No, he scales with your level and stats
Butcher rocked me twice too. I even tried to run and burned everything I had to stay alive LOL. Second time I brought a friend and this time I was able to disengage with some help however he still killed us both. I said ok need a tank and some heals The higher level outposts were insane too. Really took some doing even pulling trash but we loved it hahah