I’ve played 5 characters and four of them died to the butcher. My highest level was 28 who reached close to the end of Act 3. There is not a single boss that is this hard. Every single boss was an absolute cake walk compared to the Butcher. All his attacks slow down. His abilities slow down. He hooks you if you get to far away. Pretty sure he also has a slow aura. He outruns you easily. Unless you have already a very specific build, he is impossible to kill and impossible to escape. And the game and skilling should not revolve around the off-chance that you meet the butcher.
It’s not fun starting a new character, where all you do is hope to not encouter him. This is just frustrating!
The butcher needs to be re-balanced according to the other bosses in the game.
It’s attacks and abilities have to be changes so not every attack does apply slow.
It needs to be balanced so that there is the possibility to escape him with any skill variance that you’re playing, because you’re not able to adjust the skills to his random encounters, as you’re able to with bosses.
It should leave some room to breathe. Every boss has phases where you can think for one second or two. The butcher is in your face 24/7.
Edit: If you say one should use a Scroll of Escape then the only thing I can say is: I’m glad you agree with me. Reliance on an item with low drop rate, that cannot be bought, is just another aspect of why the Butcher is completely overpowered.
I’ve only died to him once (the first time I encountered him), and killed him a few times. I have been able to escape e when I felt I wasn’t geared to take him mostly by evade tactics, popping speed cooldowns and distance closers in reverse as well as the occasional scroll of escape.
However, 100% agree. I believe the desired goal is that he should be harder and a bit more annoying than a standard elite, but not as difficult as a dungeon boss. He’s almost there, but his kit can get pretty annoying. I wonder if the cooldowns on his abilities alone would work.
If you say one should use a Scroll of Escape then the only thing I can say is: I’m glad you agree with me on the fact that the Butcher is unbalanced. Reliance on an item with low drop rate, that cannot be bought, is just another aspect of why the Butcher is completely overpowered.
I agree with the notion that the Butcher should be between a boss and an elite group.
However, I disagree with the statement I quoted. The bosses are a cakewalk compared to the butcher. I listed some reasons why that is in my first post. The Butcher is extremely more powerful than any of the bosses.
I Agree that most bosses are easier. The Butchers regular damage actually isn’t that high. It’s his gap closers that wreck the more squishy classes. Between his hook, charge, and hamstring he’s very difficult to kite for non-barb/druid. Hence my suggestion that if he couldn’t spam them, he migh be negotiable.
re: Scroll of Escape. When exactly do you think you should use it? That’s sort of exactly what it’s for. To get you out of a situation you can’t handle. Which I think shouldn’t necissarily only mean boss encounters.
But like, and I have not made it far enough with my HC character to know this yet, what if you encounter The Butcher long before you even manage to find or earn a Scroll of Escape? It seems entirely unfair to a new HC player that this can even occur.
I personally would not allow The Butcher to spawn in until the PC has found a SoE otherwise they will become bitter from their first experience with a HC character and refuse to ever play one again. On top of all the other bullsh*t that leads to an unfair death (hard-freezing and/or CTDs when you use a teleport, or open a menu, etc.), The Butcher should not be a determinate factor in deciding a PC’s death simply because they do not have access to an item that cannot be purchased from Vendors.
Yeah, whatever works to give the player at least some opportunity to find an angle of attack, or a chance to escape.
I never said the scroll should not be used in such a situation. What I said was, and I’m going to repeat myself here: “Reliance on an item with low drop rate, that cannot be bought, is just another aspect of why the Butcher is completely overpowered.”
It shouldn’t be an almost certain death sentence if the butcher spawns and you don’t have one.
Strong disagree. Having an SoE and the nature of it has nothing to do with your ability to negotiate content. I mean a SoE won’t save you if you can’t click it before he charges you. He totally ganked me the first time and I had ~7 in my inventory.
I’ve escaped, too. But as I’ve said in my opening post, if you don’t have specific build you play with, or specific escape skills, or just a ton of luck, you can’t run away from him. I met him five times and the only time I could barely escape was with a Necromancer that has Bone Prison. And only because it spawned just out of the city boundaries, that I could reach with just a few HP left.
The butcher is only unbalanced on your first playthrough. Once you have beated the game and have unlocked aspects and renown, he is easy 20+. Unfortunatley, you have to be carefuly on your first playthrough. I avoided many dungoens or kept a scroll of escape the first week after my first encounter with the butcher.
Butcher is very strong indeed, the only way ive managed to kill him is by cheesing. You do this simply by kiting him to a shrine in the dungeon, and then you can attack him through it with ranged attacks, or hit and run around. He will always get stuck behind it! Good luck!
I’m tempted to post a how to kill him naked at any level video but don’t want him to get buffed. He’s really trivial if you think about it from a game mechanics side of things. He literally cannot hit you if you’re aware of what to do.
Just tanked him at level 58 with druid in NM normal dungeon. He was hitting harder than any boss thus far, and had probably close to or more health, also some kind of shield/barrier was popping up towards the end. Now for non melee character, I don’t know…
I’m happy with the Butcher being terrifying. He was terrifying in d1 and I’ve actually been a bit disappointed by how weak he was in d2 and d3.
I have died to him in HC before too and I don’t really mind.
But I was also under the impression that once you hit higher levels and with more skills, he becomes easier - and that he’s only difficult at lower levels.
I can face tank bosses and melt them easily with my sorc, hardly ever using a potion. Finally met the butcher and popped all my potions, thought about using my scroll, but tried to stick it out, until he eventually just despawned and left me wondering how the heck I can melt bosses but a random named didn’t even get to 1/4 hp, and nearly killed me.
The more these “little” issues pop up, like even just a random named being harder than bosses, just leaves me speechless how screwed up these devs made this final release version of D4.
