Everyone has a story for Butcher. It is a campfire ghost tale of this video game generation, right up there with the Hounds of Resident Evil Windows and I Can't Look At Mannequins The Same, Thank You Silent Hill. Everyone's Butcher story differs, but one thing remains the same:
Fresh Meat.
My Butcher Story begins on the original PlayStation version of Diablo—here my story already deviates because nobody remembers the Playstation version. It was a Saturday night, everyone was asleep and I was wide awake, squinting at the screen. Was that a door? How do I use spells again? I was not very good at this game. I was, however, very good at swearing.
The first time you hear the Butcher growl, “FRESH MEAT,” you learn new words. Normal swearing does not apply. Remember when you were just fighting skeletons in a forest? What happened to that? What is this thing? All of these were questions asked in between bouts of verbal sludge spewed forth by an adolescent mind fueled by fear and Cheetos. I wasn't ready for the Butcher. I took the game back to my local Gamestop and never looked back.
That is, until He returned.
There is a certain irony to my playing as The Butcher in Heroes of the Storm, because I have long been deathly afraid of the MOBA genre. The fanbase is often reported as toxic, and in my first few matches I learned why. One particular match was fifteen minutes of silence and a “you all suck” declared by a random teammate at the end. I thought to type, “Well, yeah, but I'm just learning so why don't you cut us some slack?”, but before I could type my rebuttal the red glow of DEFEAT painted the screen.
Playing a MOBA means having to learn an entirely new vocabulary, not just creative ways to swear, as Blizzard censors the filth that escapes your teammate's keyboards. The first time I heard a teammate say “push,” I thought we were having a baby. Which is absurd, I know, because we had only just met. Another time, a teammate told me to soak up a lane. What am I, a towel? Was there an oil spill?
When I brought The Butcher onto the battlefield, I had a few matches under my belt. I know the basics, I can ping without having to look at my keyboard, and when my teammates tell me to push, I no longer recite breathing exercises. True to form, The Butcher's primary trait is also his catchphrase: Fresh Meat. Enemies drop blood when defeated, and each drop collected increases The Butcher's attack by one percent. As you increase in level, you can power this further by increasing your blood drop maximum and gain increased attack speed. In the right hands, The Butcher can inspire the same fear he did almost twenty years ago. In my hands, he dies a lot.
The Butcher is considered an Assassin, which in Heroes of the Storm translates to a glass dagger: High damage, low health. He's “squishy,” a term I've learned to mean he can't take a lot of damage, and not meant to be a slight on his larger frame. I have trouble playing as Assassins, because while I crave the raw damage output these characters have, I also behave like a bull in a china shop. That being said, The Butcher does have some abilities that allow him to stay in the fight, such as collecting blood drops for health and his Butcher's Brand, an ability that allows him to regenerate health with each strike for five seconds. In the right hands, he is a monster. In my hands, he is more china than bull.
The one thing I am good at with The Butcher is using Lamb to the Slaughter, an ability that incites rage from within. Nothing is more satisfying than throwing down a hitching post and forcing a retreating Hero to look you in the eyes before you defeat him. Or, as is usually the case with me, just stop him from chasing you all the way down the lane. The Butcher is meant to enter the battlefield and leave no meat wasted (get it?), and as such he has no decent escape abilities. Hamstring helps a bit, slowing down potential Heroes in pursuit, but my attempts to flee were about as useful now as they were nineteen years ago.
The Butcher may have made his return in Diablo 3, but it is his entrance into the Nexus that has made me confront my adolescent fears and tell my own Butcher Story. Fans of Heroes of The Storm will enjoy his debut, unless they're on the end of his chopping block, in which case they'll be begging for a nerf.
