is Franklins Demise that good?

It's weaker on its own now since it doesn't remove charges anymore. But it's still my most hated perk and a straight up perk ban in me and my groups custom game. Irritates the hell out of me when I get slapped, drop a purple item, don't realise initially then spend the rest of the game trying to remember where I got hit so I can gety item back.

But it is made a lot more effective when combod with weave attunement. Absolutely hate going against that perk combo.

It can still be useful and a good time waster. Survivors have to waste time playing fetch if they want their item unless if you’re the rare type of player like @GeneralV that never brings in an item. 🤣

Apparently not for General V. He manages it somehow. 🤣

Me though? I don’t leave home without my lightsaber.

Honestly the best players I go against often don't have items. People who run Dramaturgy sometimes don't bring them either.

the only items i use are medkits and fog vials, i love fog vials as i like to avoid chase and be stealthy

they arent that strong true, but more fun to me than flashlight and toolboxes. timing on fog vials is important. you want to drop it before a survivor is in the radius because then it fully blocks the view. if you do it within the range of the killer than youll lose the value

There is counterplay, it's just specific to the lobby, and killers have the advantage of a visible lobby. Regress/slowdown hurts gen toolboxes, a bunch of perks counter sabo toolboxes, anti-healing perks nerf medkits, Lightborn counters flashlights. The other stuff doesn't really need counters because it's mostly harmless. And it's not like Franklin's no longer works. I lose track of my items and never get them back regularly. When you're in chase, you often don't even notice you lost your item until later. You also might not have time to go wondering about looking for it.

I'm not sure why one perk should counter every sort of item, especially when people have whole builds around those items. There's also no survivor perk that disables all killer add-ons. Many killer add-ons have no counters, like ones that show gen progress. Those are indeed 'just deal with it."

In all honesty I only use Franklins to be an item gremlin or to piss people off. My favorite use is taking items from survivors on singularity and using the biopods to monitor the items so the survivors can't get it back.

It's still mind boggling that they didn't do any compensation buff for FD after this long time.

As others have said, Franklins Demise was never a good Perk. The relevant Items (Medkits, Toolboxes, Flashlights) are better countered by other Perks. E.g. Anti-Healing and Gen Regression are better and used anyway. And if you dont want to get blinded, Lightborn is a full protection, so no need for Franklins.

The only times Franklins Demise was used was frequently was when an Event happened (because Survivors can get event-exclusive Items so some Killers liked to use Franklins just so that Survivors lose those) and in combination with Weave Attunement. Weave Attunement shows the aura of Survivors who are in range of 12m of a dropped item. They are also oblivious for 30 seconds when picking up an item. And it causes an item to drop itself when all charges are depleted. Franklins Demise was used to get more consistent value out of it and a lot of Aura Reading, if a Survivor dropped their Item in a random place during chase.

But the popularity of this combo (and Franklins Demise) fell off after they nerfed Weave Attunement and showed the Item Location to Survivors who are in that 12m radius. Which was a justified nerf IMO, picking up your own Item is one thing, but performing some triangulation to find out where a dropped Item might be… Not reasonable.

But you can still use Franklins + Weave, the combo is not terrible. It still provides good information and can still waste the time of Survivors (since the counterplay is to bring the item at the edge of the map to drop it there, which wastes time). But Franklins on its own is not good and was never good.

Ok, I decided I'd spill the beans on why it will never leave one of my Pyramid Head builds.

Survivors opposing Pyramid Head, especially in mid-high MMR, have a habit of avoiding becoming Tormented at all costs, even if it means crouching over one of PH's trails while within striking range of the killer. This makes using the Cage/Execution side of his ability rarely come into play, which for a PH player means they have no advantage.

Knock an Item out of a survivors hands with Franklin's Demise and Draw a Trail of Torment over said item, and if the survivor wants it back they'll either have to wait until the Trail disappears or get Tormented. "But they can just crouch over the trail to get their item back without getting tormented" I hear you say… Not so. When they pick up their item on a Trail, the pickup animation forces them to stand up, and apparently, as long as they aren't in the crouch position, they will get Tormented every time. Standing on a trail is apparently the sole condition for receiving the tormented status, so with FD, you can force survivors who want their items back to receive Torment.

Obviously, this was much better when FD drained Charges as it put survivors in a tough position of getting tormented or just abandoning the item since all of its charges would be gone by the time the trail disappeared, however, Despite the nerf, and with trails taking up to 90 seconds to vanish, you can effectively take their items off the board as an issue for minutes at a time if they want to avoid getting tormented.

As many have also pointed out, Weave Attunement has incredible synergy with FD, but it's unnecessary on PH since survivors getting tormented gives you the Killer Instinct alert. However, with Weave you also give survivors who retrieve their items the Oblivious status, which is another feather in your cap if you have the perk slot to spare, and it also shows them the aura of their dropped items in your trails which can serve as bait for the torment to the most forgetful survivors, who're unsure of where you knocked it out of their hands. IMO, I have 1 build that uses both FD and WA, and one that only uses FD, and both are about equally good at getting them tormented, so if that's your goal, use whichever you prefer.

PH is also not the only Killer that gets unique interaction with FD, as both Hag and Trapper can use it to "bait their traps", and Hag's Trap activation has a similar "Standing" condition as torment, but unlike torment, Survivors get a "Wipe Trap" prompt to avoid triggering it. Trapper using items to bait his traps however only gets one use from this with Bloody Coil, which secures an injury for anyone who disarms a trap to retrieve their item, so FD's not as good on him without that add-on.

Now that I've explained these "dark secrets of the old magics", I hope you have fun trying it out 😋