Butterfly — Patch 1.62 Verdict
[Liquipedia RPL: C] Pro play (RPL 2026): 2 picks, 100.0% WR, 0.7% pick/ban rate. Note: pro meta may differ from ranked.
Butterfly — Assassin Guide
Butterfly is the Thai server's best-kept secret this patch. She sits at S tier with a 100% win rate, a 0.7% pick rate, and zero ban pressure. That gap between win rate and pick rate tells you who has figured her out and who hasn't. She is a reset machine. Her passive, Assassin, wipes her cooldowns and restores 12% of her HP on every kill or assist, which means a successful gank doesn't end the pressure, it starts a chain. Almost no other jungler in the current meta snowballs a lead this fast.
The gameplan is straightforward: enter with Backstab on the squishiest target, and if it connects, you leave the fight healthier and ready to go again immediately. What makes her particularly dangerous right now is that the meta leans hard on squishy hyper-carries in the dragon lane, which is exactly what Backstab's auto-targeting wants. Her W, Sword Propel, gives her a burst of attack speed that pairs well with Omni Arms and Fenrir's Tooth, and Q's area slow keeps both divers and fleeing supports honest. She is not a hero for mindless five-man dives. She rewards target prioritisation and cooldown awareness above everything else. If you are a Diamond-plus jungler who understands tempo and can read the lowest-HP target in a chaotic teamfight, Butterfly will pay you back every single game.
Strengths
- +The passive's full cooldown reset on kill or assist lets Butterfly chain-clear or chain-gank in ways that no other assassin in the current meta can replicate.
- +Backstab's built-in 60% damage reduction on landing makes her deceptively durable for one critical second, enough to survive the enemy support's reaction CC if you Q immediately after.
- +With a 0% ban rate and 0.7% pick rate, Butterfly is effectively a free S-tier pick every single ranked game, giving you a consistent power advantage that banned-out carries cannot match.
- +Her passive HP restoration means successful ganks compound: you arrive at the next fight partially topped up without needing to recall, maintaining map pressure that snowball junglers dream of.
Weaknesses
- −Backstab's auto-targeting logic can betray you in cluttered teamfights, flinging you into a tanky frontliner who happens to have taken a few ticks of poke rather than the carry you intended to assassinate.
- −She has zero built-in gap-closer before Backstab is available, meaning if Backstab is on cooldown and the passive hasn't reset it, she is a slow melee hero with a short-range wave, easy to kite.
- −Hard crowd control applied before Backstab lands, stuns, pulls, airbornes, stops the blink entirely, so teams with reliable point-and-click CC punish her setup phase brutally.
- −Her item path is greedy and linear; if she falls behind in the first two jungle cycles, she lacks the burst to one-shot targets, and without one-shots the passive never fires, creating a loss spiral that is hard to escape.
Abilities
PAssassin
Killing or assisting an enemy resets all skill cooldowns and restores 12% of your max HP.
1Whirlwind
Butterfly releases a wave of swords around herself, dealing physical damage to nearby enemies and slowing their movement speed by 50% for 2 seconds.
2Sword Propel
Butterfly slashes a sword wave forward at high speed, dealing physical damage and increasing her attack speed by 50% for 3 seconds.
RBackstab
Butterfly dashes to the enemy hero with the lowest HP (prioritizing enemy heroes) and deals physical damage. Reduces incoming damage by 60% and increases her movement speed by 50% for 1 second.
How to Use Butterfly's Kit
This passive is the engine of Butterfly's entire identity, treat every kill not as the end of an engagement but as the reload animation for the next one. The 12% HP restoration is substantial enough to let you walk into a second target after a clean solo kill, so always scope the fight before engaging: know who dies first and who dies second. The most common high-rank mistake is burning Backstab on the wrong target, getting the kill, and then having no cooldowns left to chase a fleeing carry, passive refund means nothing if you mis-sequence.
Whirlwind's value is almost never its damage, it is the 50% movement-speed slow on a two-second duration that turns escaping targets into stationary ones. Use it immediately after landing Backstab to prevent the target or nearby allies from repositioning before your reset comes through. Be aware that the AoE is centred on Butterfly herself, so you must be in melee range; casting it before you close the gap is the single most wasteful thing you can do with this skill.
Sword Propel fires a fast forward-facing wave, so it is your only real ranged poke and a meaningful damage step in the full rotation. The 50% attack-speed steroid for three seconds is what makes Omni Arms proc so reliably, and you should be landing at least two to three auto-attacks inside that window every engagement. In jungle clears, W first on camp monsters to ramp attack speed before Q; the clear time difference is noticeable by the second buff clear.
Backstab auto-targets the lowest-HP enemy hero on the map if one is visible, making target selection partially out of your hands, understand this limitation before you press the button in a multi-hero skirmish. The 60% incoming damage reduction for one second after the blink is your survivability window; use it to cast Q immediately on landing so the slow keeps the target in range while the damage reduction is still active. Never use Backstab to finish a full-health target; it is a closer and a reset tool, not an opener on healthy enemies.
Skill Order
Priority: R > Q > W| Skill | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1Whirlwind | 1 | · | 3 | · | 5 | · | 7 | · | 9 | · | · | · | 13 | · | · |
2Sword Propel | · | 2 | · | 4 | · | · | · | 8 | · | 10 | · | 12 | · | 14 | · |
RBackstab | · | · | · | · | · | 6 | · | · | · | · | 11 | · | · | · | 15 |
Loadout
Onslaught
Assassinate
Dragon's Claw
1
2
3
4
5
6Core Combos
Standard Kill Rotation
R12Open with Backstab to close distance and trigger the damage reduction window, immediately Q to slow and deal AoE, then W to ramp attack speed and land empowered autos, use this on any isolated carry as your default gank pattern.
Reset Chain
R12PR12After the first kill triggers the passive reset, pivot immediately to the next-lowest HP target and re-run the full rotation before enemy reaction time kicks in, only viable when two enemies are both below 50% HP.
Camp-to-Gank Transition
21RWhen finishing a jungle camp just before a gank, use W to clear the last monster fast and arrive at lane with the attack-speed buff still active, then drop Q on the laner before closing with Backstab.
Gameplan
Butterfly's first real spike is at level 4 when Backstab comes online and Soulreaver is close to finished. That is when you should be looking for your first gank on the most isolated lane. Her strongest window is the stretch between completing Broken Spear and Omni Arms. Broken Spear makes her one-shot potential legitimate, and Omni Arms turns the W attack-speed steroid into bonus ability damage on every auto. She does fall off slightly in the very late game if the enemy stacks armour, but Fenrir's Tooth's execution threshold and Death Sickle's death-prevention effect give her enough breathing room to reset through a fight and stay relevant all the way to the final push.
Early Game
Levels 1–6- →Start at the blue buff closest to mid lane, clear W-first to exploit attack-speed synergy, then rotate to the opposing buff before the enemy jungler arrives — Butterfly's early clear is respectable enough to contest.
- →Look for a level 4 gank on whichever lane has an overextended squishy; Backstab at this point deals enough to force a flash or secure a kill, and a single passive proc here compresses your Soulreaver timing.
- →Avoid early invades without vision — Butterfly's pre-Backstab dueling is weak against most meta junglers, and dying before your first item spike delays the entire snowball.
Mid Game
Post Broken Spear- →With Soulreaver and Gilded Greaves completed, start alternating between dragon control and picking off rotating supports or split mids who are caught without backup.
- →Use Backstab's invisible blink to appear on the backline during 5v5 skirmishes near objectives — the enemy team will often blow CC on your frontliners first, leaving the carry exposed.
- →Track the enemy jungler's position before diving; Butterfly has almost no way to escape a counter-gank mid-fight, so committing without information is the fastest way to throw a winning game.
Late Game
Teamfight phase- →In late-game teamfights, position just outside vision range and wait for one carry to drop below 50% HP before activating Backstab — the auto-target system will find them even through minion clutter.
- →Prioritise the enemy's AD carry or mage over supports regardless of HP, since the passive reset is more valuable when eliminating high-damage threats rather than burning it on a support who will be useless anyway.
- →If the game goes to a siege, use Backstab to snipe isolated backliners defending the tower before the main fight breaks out, then reset in on the scrambling survivors.
Matchups
Butterfly's worst nightmare is a draft built around point-and-click CC. Baldum, Arum, and any composition that can interrupt Backstab before the blink completes will give her serious problems. If you see two or more hard-CC heroes in the enemy draft, play for split skirmishes rather than full teamfights, and find Backstab angles where only one enemy is nearby. Against Quillen specifically, cede the early jungle and play reactive. He wins the 1v1, so let him waste time invading while you pressure his laners. On the other side, Tel'Annas and Tulen make Butterfly borderline oppressive. If your team has either, first-pick Butterfly with confidence. That synergy effectively removes the target-selection guesswork from Backstab entirely.
Butterfly gets countered by
BaldumHis guaranteed grab interrupts Butterfly's Backstab blink entirely if timed correctly, and his bulk means she cannot one-shot him to trigger a passive reset, leaving her stranded in the middle of the enemy team.
ArumArum's AoE pull can yank Butterfly out of position the moment she blinks in, negating the damage reduction window and setting up an immediate follow-up kill from Butterfly's own allies.
MalochMaloch's kit stacks enough physical resistance and self-sustain that Butterfly's burst rotation fails to one-shot him, preventing the passive from ever firing and leaving her exposed in melee range.
QuillenQuillen out-duels Butterfly in the jungle at almost every stage of the game, can invade her camps safely, and his own blink kit makes him difficult to auto-target correctly with Backstab.
Butterfly synergizes with
TulenTulen's chain-stun keeps targets rooted in place long enough for Butterfly to land W and multiple empowered autos after Backstab, removing the enemy's ability to dodge the combo entirely.
AnnetteAnnette's knockback ultimate clusters enemies and peels for Butterfly's escape after a dive, and her buff aura accelerates Butterfly's attack-speed steroid window into a near-permanent uptime.
Tel'AnnasTel'Annas consistently whittles enemy carries down into Backstab's kill threshold before Butterfly even arrives, effectively setting up free passive-reset chains without any coordination needed.
GildurGildur's ability to lock down the frontline and shield Butterfly on engagement lets her walk into a teamfight, Backstab freely, and retreat behind a golden barrier if the first target doesn't die cleanly.
Pro Tips
- →Watch the minimap for heroes at roughly 40, 60% HP before using Backstab, the ability will lock onto the lowest HP enemy hero it can detect, so understanding the HP states of all five enemies lets you predict and control where you blink rather than being surprised.
- →The one-second damage reduction from Backstab stacks multiplicatively with Death Sickle's death-prevention shield; if you blink into a burst mage's ultimate and proc Death Sickle mid-combo, you can complete the full rotation at effectively zero risk.
- →After a passive reset, delay your next Backstab by half a second if the remaining enemy is trying to flash or use a mobility spell, the Backstab travel is nearly instant, and letting them waste their escape first guarantees the kill.
- →In the mid-game, fake jungle clear near a visible ward before a gank: the sound cue of Butterfly's Q hitting jungle monsters is audible to nearby enemies and can bait them into thinking you are farming while you are actually approaching their blind spot.
Butterfly is the right pick for Diamond-plus junglers who are disciplined about target prioritisation and want a consistent, near-unbannable S-tier carry that rewards game-sense over mechanical complexity. The passive reset loop is the single most important mechanic to internalise. Your item path, your gank timing, your teamfight positioning, all of it is built around making sure that first kill leads to a second and a third without stopping. Learn to read HP bars across the minimap before you press Backstab, and this hero will feel unbeatable. On the current Thai server, she very nearly is.
Butterfly — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Butterfly good in the current ROV patch?+
Butterfly is S tier on the Thai server right now with a 100% win rate across ranked data, making her one of the strongest junglers in the game. Her near-zero ban rate means you can pick her freely every game. That combination of power and availability at high rank is genuinely rare.
What is the best build for Butterfly?+
The core path is Soulreaver into Gilded Greaves, then Broken Spear for armour penetration, Omni Arms to convert the W attack-speed burst into ability damage, and Fenrir's Tooth plus Death Sickle to close out. Don't deviate from this order. The penetration-before-crit sequencing is what makes her one-shot window consistent rather than situational.
How do you counter Butterfly?+
The cleanest counter is hard, point-and-click CC timed to interrupt Backstab before the blink resolves. Baldum and Arum are the best picks for this. You can also stack two or more tankier frontliners so Backstab is forced onto targets that won't die in one rotation, which stops the passive reset chain from ever getting started.
Is Butterfly hard to play / good for beginners?+
She sits at Medium difficulty. The basic pattern of R-Q-W-AA is straightforward, but mastering the passive reset chain and understanding Backstab's auto-targeting logic to control where you blink takes real game sense. Beginners will get some value from her. Her ceiling, though, belongs to players who can read HP bars and predict enemy positioning across the whole map.