Hello there,
I decided to make this guide after several months of seeing people, of all ranks, playing one of my favorite heroes (The Butcher) "wrong". Butcher is one of my most played heroes and over the last 12 months I have averaged a 67% win-rate on him. This may be lower than what other guides offer, however having tried various builds, and numerous play styles, I personally have found this build to consistently perform as required to get the job done, often in circumstances where other builds may simply fail to provide.

I will be going through each of the talents available to butcher in this guide and discussing its pros and cons, as I have observed them in game. I shall also outline a general play style that I find can be effectively adapted to a variety of maps, and leaves room for you to adapt to the enemy teams composition and strategy.

The first talent tier has one very strong talent, and two very situational ones.

Invigoration is my go to talent for this tier, providing you with a solid cooldown reduction to hamstring. This allows you to much more effectively stick to enemy heroes, and provides a respectable boost to your damage, particularly when you remember that Hamstring will reset your basic attacks.

On many heroes I feel block under performs, being most effective against a heavy but slow auto-attacker. However if the enemy team has allot of auto attack damage, the mitigation can allow butcher that extra second to find a kill and grab the meat he needs.

Chop meat provides you with decent wave clear before you complete you meat quest, and more importantly on maps such as BoE gives you a strong early game racing boost, however outside of these situations is fairly useless and once you complete your quest will be overshadowed by your auto attack damage. I personally feel that outside of racing this talent is pointless, as it dose nothing to aid in you winning those team fights for an early game meatfeast.

At level 4 you have the choice of strong talents, and one trap talent.

Cheap shot is often overlooked by many players due to the fact it only boosts your damage against slowed, rooted or stunned heroes. It boosts the damage of hamstring by 100% against heroes affected by either of these, which on paper seems fairly mediocre, especially compared with the other two talents up for grabs here. Despite this I find it perfectly complements a burst damage play style, since it will proc from your ruthless onslaught it majorly increases your initial damage in a fight (arguably where its most needed), particularly before your basic attack damage starts to pick up. In addition to this, in a team fight many of these effects will be flying around and cheap shot can proc of all of them, not just your own CC's, as such it tends to provide a surprising amount of damage both to your 1v1 duels and to your team fight brawls.

Fail axe is the other big player at this tier, pick this if you still don't like the look of cheap shot, maybe your team lacks CC. It is an excellent talent to pick against heroes that will try to keep the distance from you, such as ranged assassins, as it allows you to slow them at a range they would normally be able to safely poke you.

Unrelenting pursuit is a popular talent, and its easy to see why. Ruthless onslaught is an amazing tool for engaging the enemy backline, or catching a hero out of position, this talent give it a potent cooldown reduction allowing you to pick those aggressive fights more often. I am here to inform you that that this talent is in fact a trap. Firstly this talent has the major caveat of only reducing the cool down of your charge on impact, meaning if it gets interrupted or you yourself cancel it the talent give you no benefit. Unfortunately this is the exact circumstance you would want a cool down reduction, as it may give you the opportunity to take the fight again before your target escapes, alas, this talent fails to provide that second chance you sometimes need. The other issue with this talent to consider is how often you actually want to use it. Sure the shorter cool down may allow you to charge more often (if it hits) but do you actually want to be charging that often.
The best scenario to use your charge is to catch an enemy, usually their solo laner, out of position and burst them down before they can react. After doing so you usually want to move on to either heal up, so you can rinse and repeat, or clean up the mess they were probably making of your structures to be so deep into your lane in the fist place, neither of these activities have much call for your charge. Even if you are roaming around repeatedly ganking their heroes (and they somehow aren't trying to ambush you for it) the chances are the time it takes you to get the kill, mount up and change lanes again will usually have been enough for the longer charge cool down to complete.
If you are using the charge to engage in team fights, first of all you need to be careful you actually survive long enough to benefit from its shorter cool down, and secondly have probably won or lost the fight before it has come back again, whilst it may be useful for cleaning up that last kill (if you still have enough health to safely do it), it dose nothing to help you escape if you lost the fight.
These factors rend Relentless pursuit a talent that looks amazing on paper, but in practice, rarely gives you much in the way of benefit like its competing talents.

Level 7 is your big suitability talent. Your pick here will be situational and it is up to you to decide what your biggest threat is.

Insatiable blade should be your go to if you find yourself getting kitted around, or if the enemy lacks strong spell damage, it is particularly good for chasing down ranged auto attackers such as Valla or Raynor who will try to play the distance game with you.

Meat shield is insanely good for dealing with bursty mages such as kaelthas, Jaina or Li-ming, especially as these heroes make prime targets for your charge, be mindful once again of the fact you need to actually connect the charge to gain the benefits of this talent.

Victuals can turn butcher from an oppressive solo lane hero into a mini boss that is nigh impossible for most heroes to deal with alone. Despite this I wouldn't recommend it outside of single lane brawl, or maps where the objective is next to a lane you can heal off of. Solo lane pushing is not what you want to be doing as a butcher, as it makes you very susceptible to being ganked by the entire enemy team and means you will be not be collecting as much meat as you could by roaming lanes for hero and minion deaths.

Level 10 is for butcher, like most heroes a big power spike, granting him access to an amazing tool for securing kills, and therefore meat.

Lamb to the Slaughter, the name alone should strike fear into the heart of a squishy hero, as once trapped butcher is almost guaranteed to kill you unless your team intervenes. The cool down of this allows you to reliably, either remove a hero just before a team fight, or during one, meaning used properly you can turn most objectives into a 5v4 for your team before they even begin, not to mention making your quest that much easier to complete.

Furnace blast is underwhelming, timed properly it can have just a much impact as lamb to the slaughter, but, in general, is harder to use, easier to counter and provides surprisingly little damage when compared with your basic attacks.

Level 13 is unlucky for some, your enemies included as butcher gains access to another impressive talent (and two pretty poor ones)

Brutal strike is hands down one of the best talents available to a butcher, and the fact that it is at a level where its competitors are so weak makes it surprising that you don't see it picked more.
After using hamstring butcher gains 15% extra basic attack damage for his next three basic attacks in 5 seconds, if you took invigorate at level 1 you will have this bonus available pretty much constantly, giving you a near permanent 15% damage boost to your basic attacks. This reliable damage also improves your survivability thanks to the butchers brand allowing you to turn that bonus damage into more healing for yourself.

Savage charge is very popular talent, and once again it is easy to see why, granting you an instant 10% of their health, it is a talent that I myself used to pick regularly, that is until I crunched the numbers on it. Assuming you are charging a backline hero such as Jaina or kaelthas, which are the sort of targets you would ideally focus, you deal about 210 bonus damage at level 13 to them, and whilst this would be more effective against beefy targets such as a tank, the fact is you don't want to be charging a tank who has a good chance of surviving that burst. The bonus damage provide to you by this talent is over the course of a team fight roughly between 40-60% of what Brutal strike provides (and this is assuming you don't have any meat), and unlike brutal strike it is rare that this damage will translate into more healing from butchers brand. When combined with the fact that once again the charge has to connect for you to get the benefit from this talent and you have yourself a lackluster competitor for Brutal strike.

Cleaver is another talent which seems more that its fair share of use, once again I feel owing to the fact it looks like a pretty good talent on paper. It provides butcher with a small AoE on his basic attack, roughly similar to the size of hamstring. Whist thanks to butchers high basic damage, this is actually a decent amount of splash damage, none of it provides you extra healing from your brand, and it is rare that enough of the enemy team will be close enough to each other to allow this talent to live up to its potential.

By the time you hit this level you will have hopefully gotten all of your meat, and be well on the way to becoming the unkillable juggernaut your parents whish you were. If you aren't then you are in luck, as this talent tier has two helpful tools for you, bother of which increase your survivabilty and damage potential.

Enrage, its simple and its solid. When taking damage below 50% health gain armour and attack speed for 10 seconds, on a 25 seconds cool down. This means you will hopefully have this up at least for every team fight, it grants you a significant boost to surviability, particularly if you hold your brand for it to proc. It is the best talent at this tier for the majority of players, and should be your go to pick.

If you are still kited, you likely aren't having a good game, and probably haven't completed your quest yet, Crippling slam may not be able to turn the tide of battle in your favor, but it certainly makes cleaning up afterwards easier, it may also be useful if you need to retreat from a fight, although butcher like Artanis lacks the tools to reliably escape from fights and maybe better off just fighting to the finish.
This talent is a suitable pick for a butcher than is facing opponents that are still proving too much of a challenge to chase down.

Blood frenzy is another of butchers many 'trap' talents, whislt not a bad talent Per se, it certainly fails to have the tide turning effect that Enrage does. In a drawn out team fight, where you constantly have an enemy to attack and keep this bonus up this is an amazing talent, but very few team fights will ever play out like this, particularly which butchers high damage able to melt through an entire team in short order if not shut down. Outside this niche circumstance Enrage is simply a better talent. Were Blood frenzy not specific to heroes it would certainly have a place as a racing and boss clearing talent, however unfortunately this is not the case.

In most games, you should have long completed your quest by now, and hopefully be about to win, however that is not always the case. Luckily butcher still has some powerful talents left to pick from, that should either seize the day or turn the game around.

Lets first of all get the worst out of the way, Fire of Hell is bad, its a fairly useless upgrade to a weak ultimate, you will rarely land the second blast and its damage is likely inconsequential at this point.

All three of butchers other level 20 talents have powerful boosts to aspects of his kit.

Nexus blades makes your basic attacks do more damage and slow the enemy, its simple, but it is powerful and requires no effort to use, as such it is rarely a bad pick, and can be relied upon to deliver.

Bolt of the storm is never a bad talent to pick on any hero, on butcher it gives you a long awaited escape if you really need it, at the point in the game where a single death can decide it. It also helps you reposition in fights make it harder for the enemy team to focus you, and lets you chase down fleeing meat.

Slaughter house turns butchers powerful ult into a game ending one, allowing you to single handedly set up team fights, it is second only to E.T.C's moshpit in terms of CC, and is often the optimal pick.

Butcher is a melee assassin, as such he is prone to being kited.

His high damage makes him a prime target for the enemy team, left unchecked he will run rampant through a backline. As such make sure your team is able to follow up on your damage.

It is not your job as a butcher to start a fight, let your tank engage, your priority is very much get kills don't die.

You don't have to get the kill to get the meat from a death, you just have to be nearby the fight, as such you can afford sometimes to play more passively to secure the meat for your quest. Whilst it is never good to bait your team if someone has to die, its better that it isn't you, similarly if you have a butcher on your team, be prepared to take a death or two for him and make sure they understand this. He will pay you back when he completes his quest and eats them alive for you.

There are two stages of play to butcher, Premeat you have to play conservatively, try to gank enemy heroes, stay near your team so they can help you, and focus on getting at least 15 meat before taking a risk that may cause your death. Postmeat, you can play much more aggressively, soloing camps, including bosses, and actively hunting enemy heroes into jungle. Whilst your not invincible you are very tough to kill, especially 1 on 1.

Use your butchers brand on a hero you know you can attack, once you hit 200 meat you can use it to out heal almost anything. You can also use it to solo bosses, just be sure to save it for when you can actually get healing out of it, and not using it immediately on a hero, either about to die, or capable of kiting you.

The best way to get meat in the early game is by roaming lanes, and ganking their solo laners, usually with the help of a hero that can either CC them or burst them down for you. Too many butchers try to solo lanes, which hinders their ability to stack up meat till team fights.

Be aware of what the other team is doing, who you can see on the minimap and where you last saw them. If you can see their team, they may be doing a boss, or waiting in ambush at the next objective, or coming to kill you! Communicating this to your team will turn the tide of the game more than just about anything. Allowing you to predict their actions and take appropriate counter measures

Whilst throughout the talent section I have stressed the need to target low health heroes with your abilities, often they are not safe to attack, either playing to far back, or your team can't help you dive their backline. This can be very frustrating, as it can slow the speed at which you stack your meat, however the best thing you can do is to encourage your team to attack a safe target, often their tank. If your entire team can safely focus their tank, they will still die fairly quickly and bring out many of theirs and their supports cool downs in the process, setting your team up for a fight against an unprotected backline. Of all the tips I make this is the most general and most important, If you can get your team to do this it will massively boost your winrate on any hero, and it can be applied to a number of various other games.

I hope you found this guide informative, or least mildly of interest. Please feel free to comment with anything general or specific. And most importantly Have Fun.