Free Hero of the Week: The Butcher
Free Hero Rundown will focus on one hero from the weekly set of free heroes. During the week, except for daily quests, you’ll see me playing this hero, hopefully kicking butt and taking names.
Possible Talent Choices
The latest melee assassin to grace the Nexus, The Butcher, is part of the free hero rotation for the first time this week. He is also this week’s Free Hero Rundown. The Butcher was the first hero added as part of the Eternal Conflict event and not only does he feature some new mechanics, he can also deal a ton of damage.
The Butcher’s most unique mechanic is his trait, Fresh Meat. Enemies that die near The Butcher drop little blood droplets called Fresh Meat. When you collect them, they increase The Butcher’s attack damage by 1% per stack. This can stack up to 25%, but all Fresh Meat is lost on death. Minions usually drop 1 meat and enemy heroes drop 3 times that amount.
Because all Fresh Meat stacks are lost on death, it can be rather punishing to die when playing The Butcher. Sometimes you can use this to your advantage though. If you have 25 stacks, it’s possible to bait players into fighting or chasing you to finish you off and reset your stacks. If you have allies around, they can then get the jump on the over zealous hero, hopefully keeping you alive in the process.
Basic Abilities
Hamstring is The Butcher’s Q and main attack. Hamstring has a low cooldown and deals damage in a line in front of The Butcher. Enemies hit are also slowed by 50%, but the slow fades over 2 seconds. Hamstring does it all pretty much. It can be used as single target damage, wave clear, and crowd control. It’s also good to cast Hamstring before using Ruthless Onslaught to help ensure it will connect with your target and get the stun.
Butcher’s Brand is his W attack. This marks a target enemy, dealing a little damage but most importantly causing all attacks against that enemy to heal you for 75% of the damage dealt. The brand lasts for 5 seconds and you heal twice as much if you are attacking a marked hero. This ability gives The Butcher sustain when fighting up close, but the cooldown is pretty long, so it’s best to use it once you know you can wail on a target for a few seconds.
The Butcher’s E is Ruthless Onslaught, a targeted charging ability. You become Unstoppable and gain movement speed while you dash at the target. If you can reach the target, they take damage and are stunned for 1 second. This also has synergy with his heroic ability Furnace Blast. You can cast Furnace Blast while charging to prime it to explode on your victim. Very nice.
Heroic Abilities
As mentioned, The Butcher’s first heroic ability is Furnace Blast. Once cast, a ring appears around The Butcher to indicate the blast radius. After 3 seconds, any enemies still in the ring take heavy damage. The area of effect is centered on The Butcher, of course, so you can always reposition before the blast. This is always nice when paired with Ruthless Onslaught, but it doesn’t have to be. In the middle of a team fight, it’s easy to miss the ring effect, so you can catch foes unawares sometimes.
The Butcher’s second heroic ability is Lamb for the Slaughter. This places a post that, after a 1 second delay, chains the nearest hero to it for 4 seconds. The chained hero takes damage and can only move inside a small circle around the post. This can even be upgraded with the level 20 talent to chain ALL heroes within the effect.
Lamb for the Slaughter has some serious implications in a fight, basically giving your team a free kill or forcing the enemy team to surround and protect the chained hero. It’s good to try and place the post in the middle of the enemy team, making them scatter to avoid getting hitched. Often times, that disruption alone will be enough to turn a team fight in your favor.
Talents
For this talent tree, I decided to focus on buffing one ability above the others, Hamstring. This is simply his most used ability, and the extra damage and utility these talents provide make Hamstring a force to be reckoned with. Invigoration is the level 1 talent which refunds some mana and reduces the cooldown by 1 second if you hit a hero with Hamstring.
Flail Axe increases the length of Hamstring’s effect, while Brutal Strike boosts your next melee attack by 50% for some good burst damage. The final Hamstring talent is Crippling Slam which increases the duration of Hamstring’s slow by 25% and also keeps it from losing the effect over time. All these buffs make Hamstring a very threating ability, allowing you to chain slow with Ruthless Onslaught’s stun, dealing extra damage after each Hamstring.
The other talents (because you just can’t pick Hamstring talents at every level sadly) are Furnace Blast for the heroic ability, Crave Flesh, and Bolt of the Storm. Crave Flesh and Bolt of the Storm give you a bit more mobility when Ruthless Onslaught is on cooldown and as a melee assassin, keeping up with your foes is vital. Furnace Blast was my heroic ability of choice because this build really focuses on dealing damage with Hamstring, and being able to chain Hamstring into Ruthless Onslaught into Furnace Blast is a ton of damage!
In lane, you want to use Hamstring mostly to poke the enemy hero, allowing you to get in close and heal with Butcher’s Brand. You can use Hamstring to wave clear, but being a melee assassin, it’s harder to press damage on turrets than as ranged, which means you want to fight your foes in the middle of the lane usually. Try and get Fresh Meat stacks early and often, and be aware of your health so you don’t die and lose them all.
The biggest weakness of this build is that it is damage focused, not survivability focused. While Butcher’s Brand can help you win 1 on 1 trades, it won’t save you from a focused attack by two or more enemy heroes. So pick your fights wisely and if you can set up a good Hamstring-Ruthless Onslaught-Furnace Blast chain, go for it. Hamstring is also a good escape tool when you get low on health, so don’t forget about it when running away.
There are several other good builds for The Butcher and while the Hamstring focused one appealed to me, there might be better ones out there. If you have a cool or powerful talent spec, post it in the comments or tweet me @AGRitterific. I hope you enjoy playing this fearsome demon!
