The solo queue and team fight build is designed to function well even with an unorganized team. It also functions very well with an organized team that isn't built fully to support you and dive in. This makes butcher able to fit into more traditional teams and still be a beast.

Gank / Roam Build is designed to work well with an organized team that is built to support Butcher and roam with him. If you go with this build you want double support most likely with one of them being Tassadar for the shield. You also want to make sure the team is on the same page and will roam with you for ganks. This can be a very effective build for organized play. Please do not use this build in solo queue. You will have tons of damage but a whole lot more deaths too as you're losing a ton of survival and utility.

Why would sacrifice damage for a team fight build?

The thing about the Butcher that you immediately see is he does alot of dmg. The thing that is less readily apparent is how to make him survive better and be useful in a team fight. So often you see a butcher charge in and take 1 person out or almost take 1 person out and die. Trading 1 for 1 can be fine if you have an experience advantage but actually hurts your team if you are higher level. Either way being out of commission and losing any stacks of fresh meat is not a good call. The thing is most assassins have escape mechanisms built in. Thrall has wind fury, Zeratul has blink, Illidan has Dash and Dive, Murky has bubble. The only melee assassin that doesn't have this is Kerrigan. Kerrigan has self shielding and the ability to stun massive amounts of people though and that's why she doesn't need the escape mechanism. You get the control and the dmg to try to take out the group so you can walk away when they are low.

Butcher unfortunately does not innately have any escape mechanisms and until he gets his ult can't hope to do much aoe dmg to simply walk away from a team fight. With no disengage this leaves him with either kill everyone before he's focused (which happens quickly at high levels of play), have really good support and control to support him, or talent for the support and control to make a difference in team fights. Below I'll outline what you give up in order to do the last option which is the most reliable unless you are in a highly organized group.

Talents Explained:

Tier 1 (Level 1):

Invigoration
You gain a 1 second cooldown reduction on your hamstring (25 percent) and reduce it's cost in half. Amazing sustain. Having hamstring reduced from 4 seconds to 3 seconds may not seem like a big deal but it is. This combined the two other hamstring talents will make a huge difference in your control over the fight. In addition to this you also gain the advantage of cutting the mana cost in half which allows more poke and play.

What you give up: In order to get this talent you give up the self healing of Vitalis from kills. With Victuals you can commit big and IF you get out still hope to be back in the fight soon by clearing a minion wave. The thing is your commitment is very short as you will be focused and you will be losing a lot of control not taking invigoration which will synergize very well with later talents. In addition to this if you play this build the way I recommend, you should need significantly less self healing and a healers patch healing should be sufficient. Chop meat is not worth it as it's not hard to farm up your stacks, the later in the game the easier it becomes as well. Block can provide a small survival boost in fights but the control from the extra hamstrings you get combined with the other talents in this build will give you a better survival boost still.

Tier 2 (Level 4):

Flail Axe
You gain 40 percent range on your hamstring. This talent is essential. When you combine this with invigoration you're not only going to get the reduced cost on the hamstring but also hit a lot more targets with the increased range. It's very easy to position and hit poke damage on a large portion of the team without fully committing to a kill. This allows you to poke, rotate, get healed and re-position and contribute meaningful damage while waiting for your moment to strike / pounce and take 1 person out. This also synergizes insanely well with a control talent we will take later. With hamstring you can poke from the range of most ranged assassins and apply the damage to more targets.

What you give up: This is a tier with lots of possibilities and most people overlook flail axe. I'll explain why you shouldn't. Envenom used to be an autopick on assassins. It's now had the dmg spread out over double the duration AND had that amount of damage reduced. It really makes little difference in fights anymore passive healing, self heal, or heals over time easily negate it. Unrelenting pursuit is a good talent if you are going a charge based build but 12 seconds is still a long cooldown and would possibly let you get a second stun off before you have to disengage but it's just not worth the control you lose by being able to poke from longer range with your hamstring combined with the later tier talent we will be grabbing. Cheap shot could be substituted in for flail axe if your team has a high amount of control for a little extra damage. I still wouldn't recommend it though as that range lets you hit targets further away so you can close gaps, lets you apply more pressure and subsequently more damage by doing it safely. In addition the extra range synergizes well with another talent we will be taking later.

Tier 3 (Level 7):

Abattoir
Abattior gives you 10 percent more dmg which is then further modified by our lvl 20 talent. In addition it halves the amount of blood you lose should you actually die. We're skipping a number of damage talents in this build but this will not be one of them, the boost is just too big and late game helps your auto attacks hit like a truck so that you now have both control and damage.

What you give up: Brutal strike seems like a good talent since we're going alot of hamstring talents but in 1 cycle of abilities on a target it gives less damage then a simple cycle with Abattior. A cycle (AA/HS/AA to start) will bring you 1163 damage at this level range assuming you get all your auto attacks off, verses with abbatior it will net you 1301 damage assuming you get all your auto attacks off. 1 Cycle is being considered as the time it takes you to open with auto attack followed by invigorate to the time it is back off cd again. Final assault again this is good for a charge build and gives you extra range to initiate from, but you lose too much dmg to make it worth it if you're not taking other charge talents. Insatiable blade may be an okay choice if you find you have lots of trouble surviving but you are giving up 10 percent dmg which is a pretty big increase. To put it in perspective nexus blades which is generally considered a great lvl 20 talent is 20 percent dmg. Getting half of that at lvl 7 and being able to pick up nexus at 20 is insane.

Tier 4 (Level 10):

Furnace Blast
The choice of ultimate is ultimately (pun intended) up to you. I find that furnace blast works very well with this build as you are able to keep the enemies controlled with hamstring easier and ensure they get hit by blast. I addition to this when you pick up that lvl 16 hamstring talent they will have no chance at getting away. I prefer lamb when I go full damage gank and have an organized team to support me though (which is the other build).

Tier 5 (Level 13):

Crave Flesh
This talent gives you alot of utility. Normally applying brand means that you are low on health and need to heal up. If you're facing unfavorable odds it most of the time wont make a difference and you will die anyway but maybe be able to take one more with you. In addition most the time when people see brand on them they start running away and you can't catch them execept for maybe 1 or 2 hits with a hamstring. With this talent if you choose to stay in the fight you can stick to them like glue and get the full benefit from brand due to the extra run speed. In addition if you find yourself in a bad situation this gives butcher something he didn't have before. A disengage. Apply brand, hit hamstring for a quick burst heal, run away with 130 percent movement speed and your opponents at 50 percent movement speed and suddenly you can commit harder and disengage safer.

What you give up: Burning rage is a good talent for a tank that can stay in for a significant amount of sustained damage in melee. Butcher can't really do this, he gets in does his damage and gets out. The 50 per second is a nice perk but giving up the utility of a chase down and disengage talent all in one is too much to sacrifice for a mere 50 damage a second at lvl 20, especially when you will be in melee for far shorter time than other characters with this ability. Savage charge is a cool talent. It adds a ton of dmg on your initiate if you charge on a high health hero. The problem is most of the time unless you are ganking you don't do that you charge in on someone who is 3/4 to 1/2 health so you can secure a quick kill, at which point this talent becomes less and less effective. With a full charge build it works okay though, this just isn't that build and you're giving up a ton of utility that will keep you alive in objective team fights for it. Spell shield got a buff this patch and is significantly better. With butcher it allows you to survive the initial burst of abilities coming your way which is great. The problem is that once your survive that when they continue to focus on you then you go down with no means of escape and no means to apply meaningful damage with your brand to self heal if you wanted to hard commit. That being said this talent could still be a substitute choice against a nova or zeratul if you find they are hunting you, you do lose alot of utility taking this though.

Tier 5 (Level 16):

Crippling Slam
This is the bread and butter of the build. All your talents come together here to make hamstring one of the best soft cc/snare abilities in the game. With all the talents now your hamstring will reach 40 percent farther, cost half as much, last 2.5 seconds, be off cooldown after 3 seconds, and snare for 50 percent duration for the full 2.5 seconds. This is massive. This means you can spam snares at almost ranged assassin range and keep the enemy almost permanently slowed at 50 percent movement speed. They have .5 seconds that they can move at normal speed between snares. You can lockdown an enemy team so that they can't flee while your team picks them off easily. You can kite an enemy team while they fail at trying to kill your team using this. And you can just in general make positioning an nightmare for the enemy team. Oh yah and executioner is now pretty much permanently up for team mates who take it. Also team mates can now hit their skill shots super easy and pick off huge chunks of enemy teams. All three talents combined also lets you put on safe and consistent pressure damage until you are ready to fully commit to destroy an opponent in melee. You can also look at it as softening them up for the kill. The best part is that nobody escapes your blast furnace now. You can ensure that it will hit most if not all of the team for that 1000 damage burst at lvl 20.

What you give up: Enraged is an amazing talent that also offers utility by reducing cc against you and increasing attack speed for 10 seconds when falling below 50 percent health. This can be the burst you need to get someone down or survive yourself. The thing is that you are giving up massive amounts of utility for yourself and the the team by dropping an unprecedented 2.5 second snare or 50 percent. It's just not worth it for this build. Blood frenzy is one of my favorite talents in the game and works very well if you go with a roaming gank squad in an organized team. Your team really needs to build around you if you are taking that route though and this build is more of a safe and utility build that still provides high damage even without this talent in both organized and unorganized play. This is a hard ability to sacrifice and I know alot of people will be hesitant to give it up as it gives so much damage. Try without though and you will see you still do plenty of damage and can now destroy the enemy team by keeping them snared. Think about it this way. One person putting out a ton of damage on a team is great. 3 people putting out a ton of damage on a team due to them being unable to move is better.

Tier 6 (Level 20):

Nexus Blades
Really this tier is up to you. I find that blast furnace upgrade is fine and all but nexus blades adds extra slow, scales your damage very high to make up for not taking blood frenzy, and provides more life leech when you use your brand. To me nexus blades is the best choice. Bolt of the storm is a good choice as well if you find yourself getting dived alot and unable to escape safely even with your movement speed boost on brand (very few teams can do this).