The Butcher

The Butcher, the Flesh Carver, is a Melee Assassin Hero from the Diablo universe. The Butcher is a sadistic creature that delights in the torture and pain of others. His insatiable hunger drives him to carve up his enemies and consume their fresh meat. Even those fighting alongside him shrink away in fear when he draws near. He is violence incarnate; he is brutality given shape.

The Butcher is an Assassin who starts slow, but deals extreme damage after collecting enough Meat.

Background
There are many demons within the Burning Hells, though they used to be solely under Diablo's command. The butchers are stitched together from the parts of other demons to combine their strengths, then given life through wicked magic.

Under the guise of searching for the king's missing son, Archbishop Lazarus led many of Tristram's citizens into the old cathedral. The archbishop lured them into a trap, and most of them were killed by the Butcher. The survivors were left with wounds that festered with disease, and even the town's healer found them almost impossible to treat. The Butcher was eventually slain by Prince Aidan and his allies.

Twenty-two years later, the resurrected Butcher demon was summoned to the dungeons beneath King Leoric's manor by Maghda and her Coven.

Gameplay
The Butcher is a Melee Assassin who utilizes his trait to grow drastically in power as a match progresses. The early part of the match should consist of The Butcher trying to complete the quest portion of Fresh Meat as soon as possible. This increase in Attack Damage and Attack Speed provide a huge power spike to The Butcher. His Basic Attacks hit incredibly hard, providing him with very high sustained damage.

Strength

 * Strong Late Game
 * Extremely high Basic Attack Damage
 * Can recover massive amounts of health with Butcher's Brand
 * Strong duelist
 * Ruthless Onslaught allows for easy engages and ganks

Weaknesses

 * Extremely vulnerable to burst damage and crowd control, including Blinds
 * Multiple ways for enemy Heroes to negate both of his Heroic abilities
 * If he is unable to use Basic Attacks on on the target marked with Butcher's Brand, he will fall very quickly in team fights
 * Losing Fresh Meat on death can make it difficult to recover
 * Weak Early Game

Abilities

 * See Data page for a table of scaled values at key levels.

Trivia

 * The Butcher first appeared in Diablo (December 1996). His Heroes of the Storm design reflects his appearance in Diablo III (May 2012).
 * The Butcher was under consideration for inclusion as early as 2011.
 * The Butcher was released on June 30th, 2015.
 * The models shown at BlizzCons 2013 and 2014 depicted the Butcher's cleaver, sickle, hands, and apron as being covered with blood. In the live game, they are all clean.
 * The Butcher only speaks a handful of words, like "fresh", "meat", "kill", and "slaughter".
 * Even without his buffs, the Butcher has the highest auto-attack DPS of any hero in the game.
 * The Butcher is voiced by Steven Blum.
 * When using the Butcherlisk skin, enemy Heroes and Minions will drop Biomass instead of Fresh Meat. (This is only a visual change and still functions the same as Fresh Meat)