Table of Contents
Skill Build
Passive Skill
Wasteland Force: if he has not taken damage for a short time. His movement speed is increased by 10% and will restore 1% of his max hp/sec. The best item to vest uses this. The passive effect would be the Oracle to help increase the life regen.
Skills
Iron Hook
His first ability is Iron Hook: a directional ability that pulls a target towards Franco and deals physical damage. It is one of Franco’s best skills to use but requires good aim to use. It’s great for picking off single, low health targets from a mob fight. Or dragging away enemy players from their team and into yours, primarily supports.
Fury Shock
Fury Shock: A short-range AOE that deals 450 + 3% of his max hp physical damage to enemies. Slowing them by 70% for 1.5 seconds. Thunder Belt is one of the best items to use for this. Because it will help deal additional actual damage to your target as well, helping finish off that last bit of health.
Ultimate Blood Fury
Blood Fury: Franco targets an enemy and slashes them six times. Dealing high amounts of physical damage to them.
A good combo would be to hook your target, hit them with blood fury. Then use Fury shock to finish them off, or stop them from running to get the killing blow on them. With these three combo aim for more squishy targets to take full advantage of it.
You can also do the hook, shock, then blood fury, but the first combo may yield slightly better results since your target will be lower on HP. If Blood Fury doesn’t kill them, Fury Shock will slow them so you can get those last hits in.
Spells
Flicker is a godlike spell on Franco: You can use chain, drag them, then flicker backward quick. This will extend the distance you pulled an enemy away from their teammates, letting you kill them easier, but this requires practice.
A flame shot is also good on him. Hit someone with it, drag them back since they are lower on Hp then get a kill off of it.
If you are lacking any sort of tanking ability revitalize is good. To be able to survive longer fights/you are caught alone after a failed fight.
Petrify is a great combo with his hook. If you petrify a target, it can let you hook them easier for that brief moment they are stunned.
Emblems
Take the tank emblem on his; it’s just a solid option on a support/tank.
If you are practiced enough to use flicker + hook, then also take a support emblem to help there. Since spell cooldown will be reduced, you can pull off the hook + flicker combo more often. The more you can do that, the more can disrupt team fights.
Item Build
Franco does not need to farm very much compared to other characters. Picking up a shadow mask at the start of the game is a solid choice.
Warrior or Tought boots as well to be tankier never hurts to have extra health in a fight.
Rapid boots are also good, closing in on targets so you can hook them easier will let you do hit and run better. Or get away from fights you can’t handle as well.
Thunder Belt is also an excellent choice for more mana regen. Since abilities and spells (like the flicker hook combo I like to call it) will elevate your gameplay.
Now onto more defensive items: this will depend on the composition of the enemy teams damage type. If it’s mainly magic damage, use Athena’s Shield and Cursed helmet to deal with magic damage better.
If the enemies are dealing with more physical damage, Immortality and Antique Curiass both help protect against it.
For Franco specifically, Queen’s Wind and Guardian Helmet are two great pickups for him. Avoid more just pure DPS and non-support items on him. Franco is a better Support /tank than straight DPS role. Buying items that support and tank better will suite his gameplay style better.
Laning Phase and Playstyle
Franco cannot single-handed win fights or tank an entire enemy team; with his hook ability (and flicker if you can get good at it), you can pull away enemy players away from their teammates and into yours. Once there will be very little chance of escape, and setting them back on respawn timer. Franco excels at being a semi assassin, while also having the health to deal with up-close fights.
The hook is his most important ability, not using it or always missing will lead to him being a much weaker characte. Getting good at aiming the hook, in the middle of fights, is crucial in dealing with enemy players. Even if you do learn how to land a hook, you still need to learn how to pick your targets. Prioritizing certain characters over others will be crucial when optimizing Franco.
The biggest mistake you could make is trying to 1 v one tank characters with your hook, alone. Once again, Franco is a support/tank, not a DPS machine. So, dragging heavily armored targets towards yourself might be asking to die.
What you should be targeting are the enemy supports. Anyone who can heal especially is a very high priority. If you knock out an enemy healer in the middle of a fight, it can swing the game in your team’s favor!
Remember, though, some enemies with lower Hp have ways to escape danger, so if they survive a blood fury or Blood Fury is on CD, you have to use Fury Shock to slow them.
If you pull them to you, and they run away again, you wasted your ability. Timing is everything. Don’t just pop chain, flicker, Blood Fury and Fury Shock and expect it to always work. If someone escapes now, all your abilities are on cooldown, and you might be low on mana.
Conclusion
One of the last things is mana management: Franco excels in dealing with enemy supports, but if you have no mana, you can’t do your job! Spamming Fury Shock or always missing your hooks will result in poor gameplay.
Franco is a combo character, his abilities are fine alone, but when chained together, they are devastating. So, conserving mana and only using it and spells when you need to is the key to being a fury on the battlefield, or some random scarecrow missing all his hooks and just feeding the enemy team.
Franco is easy to pick up, but hard to master. Once you do master him, though, any support caught by you will be doomed.