Need some Butcher tips

General Discussion
1

I decided it was time to learn a new hero, so I picked Butcher. I like him a lot, and I’m doing well, I guess. I’ve played 22 games and won 13. This is all in QM.

I’d appreciate any tips at all, but especially tips for the first 10 minutes or so. Until I get 200 meat, I feel generally worthless and squishy. I find myself playing very timidly, and constantly worried about getting killed and losing meat.

And yes, I have read some guides at icy veins, but still find myself not knowing exactly what to do at the beginning of games.

  1. What’s your general strategy for the first 10 minutes or so of a game?
  2. How long should it reasonably take me to get 200 meat?

Thanks!

2

Chop Meat is your best friend. So is rotation.

6 Likes
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Don’t try to farm meat by laning by yourself. You get more kills by following up on your team’s abilities and getting meat from kills.

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Butcher like Zeratul is a gank hero, this mean you need to gank someone in another lane to get their meat and any minion meat that is there at the time.

But unfortunately in QM no one lanes so you are forced to if you want exp meaning you will get your meat at lot later than usual while your team blame you for not having enough meat because they made you lane.

Here are the talents i usually go.

Level 1:
all are good depending on the enemy comp/map

Block: Slow , but heavy AA (Leoric or Raynor)
Chop meat: if the map calls for waveclear (Braxis , Tomb)
Invigoration: if you don’t need the other 2 and the enemy has a big frontline (Muradin, Diablo)

Level 4:

I basically always go Unrelenting Pursuit
Ruthless onslaught is your Best ability and having the cooldown reduced by 1/3 of the time is an amazing pick.

Level 7:

90% of the time you should go Insatiable Blade because after the charge Butcher has no good means of chase.

5% of the time go Meat Shield because the enemy team might have 2 burst mages that you cant really go in on with out taking a ton of damage (KT, KTZ)

And the other 5% is for Victuals when your team makes you lane but you have no healer

Level 10:

Basically always go Lamb to the Slaughter, a 3 second silence plus an escape denial. also try to use this as either an opener for a teamfight or a gank on someone with high mobility (genji, tracer)

I guess you can go Furnace Blast of the enemy has blinds But not much else i would use it for.

Level 13:

Brutal Strike is great because it increase you already amazing AA damage, and Butcher is an AA hero meaning this will only make him better expect against blinds.

Savage Charge i would tank if the enemy has a really Tanky team

And basically never take Cleaver unless you NEED the wave clear

Level 16:

Only take Enraged it is way to good to pass up
Increase AA speed and Gain armor is amazing.
I would highly recommend only taking Enraged at this tier.

Level 20:

If the enemy groups up a ton go Slaughterhouse, this is the 20 i take most of the time.

Bolt of the storm can be good if the enemy has a lot of slows and you need to have an escape ready.

Nexus Blades is good if the other 2 don’t need to be chosen.

and NEVER choose Fires of hell, just don’t

Tips for the Butcher:

You work better with teammates who like to dive such as Genji, Tracer , Kerrigan, Kharazim, Tyreal just to name a few

Do not engage a team fight let the tank do it and you follow up.

You work well against backliners with minimum escape so that’s when to pick him in draft.

Good luck in games with him

9 Likes
6

The best advice is to play a different hero :smiley:

7

/summon the HEISENBERG

2 Likes
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FRESH MEAT © HEISENBERG

2 Likes
9

Playing timidly early game is perfectly fine, Butcher is picked in the situation when his teammates are willing to draft a composition around him (healer with cleanse and front line with good cc to lock down Butcher’s target). The whole point of a Butcher comp is to just stay near towers and farm minions at a safe position early game, and if the enemy gets impatient and tries to push in you try to punish someone out of position to feed Butcher.

Keep up soak early and don’t feed. If you lose a Fort or two early on that’s OK, just make sure your team’s XP is somewhat on par. You want the enemy to think they’re winning and get complacent. Then the moment your Butcher gets stacked your team should suddenly flip a switch, catch out the enemy team which you will have ideally baited into behaving carelessly, and your whole team runs in and Butchers them and wins the game.

How long should it take before you’re stacked? Don’t worry about any deadline, sometimes you just run into a smart enemy team that reads everything you try to do and never let you stack or finish your quest and that’s life. Sometimes your prey eludes you all game causing you to hyah in frustration but other times you get to run around Butchering everyone. You live for the latter moments.

10 Likes
10

Go in Q build and kill an all.

11

I’ll be honest, I expected you to just respond with “Fresh Meat” & now I am a bit disappointed that you didn’t.

Nice tips though.

1 Like
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VEGETABLE… BAD! :broccoli:
MEAT… GOOD! :meat_on_bone: :cut_of_meat:

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Thanks for the advice guys! I’m still having fun playing Butcher. I’m 15-11 now. Good enough, I guess.

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Do not gorget you can go stun followup earlygame. Let other people get kills. U just need meat for now.

I personally like furnace blast more than lamb. Great for burst hit-and-run tactics. After 300 meat your build wont matter anyway, and burst will help much consistently than a chance to catch enemy team in 20 lamb upgrade.

15

Ah, and never initiate with butcher. NEVER EVER. Its not worth it. Even late game. Even if u die and not loose meat, u still wont gett any new one if u r dead.

2 Likes
16

Watch Jhow play Butcher he’s pretty good at it.

I used to always take Lambs to the slaughter but then after watching JHow I saw how effective Furnace Blast can be.

Basically you press R for Furnace blast then E for Ruthless Onslaught into your target. If you time it right you can hit 1 intended (and kill) then turn on who’s left. Just don’t 1 v 5 unless they are all below 25-30% health.

Savage Charge is a MUST TAKE if you do the furnace blast!!!

1 Like
19

Before getting stacks, Butcher would be more aptly named Lurker. Your only 2 jobs are to stay alive and lock-down overextended enemies and/or peel for your teammates with your Q and E. Let your teammates initiate and deal damage, you just lurk in the back an jump in to support them occasionally.

Once you get meat, you can be much more daring, but don’t expect to be able to dive in on a full health team and get anything done. Keep playing it safe until your teammates have bloodied the enemy and waters a little, then Jaws your way in and have a feeding frenzy.

Lone tanks make great targets once you’re stacked, even if they have CC. They’ll never be able to kill you unless you make a mistake or they get help. I remember one time I ran into an Artanis at level 20 (with the old, actually good Force of Will) and we just sat there slapping each other for about a full minute before the rest of the teams joined in. I only dropped below 50% health when he Suppression Pulsed me, but I had him on the line almost the whole time. That was hilarious.

20

Thanks for this. Since I read this, I’ve been trying it and had decent success with it. I just always assumed taking Lambs to the Slaughter was the way to go, but I reaaaally like the Furnace and E combo.

I’ve just got to get the timing down. I’ve blown it a few times (fun watching your Furnace Blast go off 1 step short of the enemy!). When I’ve gotten it though, it’s devastating.

The only Jhow video (where he talked specifically about Butcher) I could find on Youtube was from 2016, and he’s talking about talents that aren’t even options anymore. Has he done any more recent Butcher videos?

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dont blame him. Ps you can thank me later

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Just wait till he’s streaming games on twitch, then ask him about butcher and he may play it. especially if he’s in QM or ARAM…

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One of the things I did was I would play AI teammates on recruit level difficulty, and just work on charging into the enemy and having the ult go off, plus sometimes it just plain fun the rack up 27 kills and 1 death and almost 400 meat… its just silly fun… but mostly its practice for getting the distance down on how faraway you are before the blast goes off and also to work on your technique of pressing the keys right quick enough…

1 Like