Does anyone have any rankings for the HotE heroes?

I must be one of the few players that have enjoyed great success with Davith

Yes, it was bad at the start but after the middle of the campaign, Davith became a monster. Embody the Force + holocron played a big part. And then, starting hidden with shrouded lightsaber and a couple of good attachments for my weapon I used to kill pretty much anything, and had a good deal of survivability.

Edit, delete.

On 15/10/2016 at 12:14 PM, Dark Reaper said:

Inspired by the thread « Hero descriptions to help people choose a character» ....

It would be very interesting an update with new Jabba and HotE Heroes

Yeah, I know. I have been meaning to do this for ages, but work and two small children have a tendency to eat up my time. I will try to find some time soon.

Excellent guide. Hopefully you can convince the family you are doing God's work ?

I like this thread a lot, and appreciate all the thought and effort that went into it. It was also my inspiration for this post I made about Loku. Looking back at the Loku ratings on page 1, I wonder if the Overwatch card was completely misinterpreted? Overwatch is incredibly useful. Being able to bank an action when you don't have a compelling target, and spend it when you do is powerful in-and-of itself. The free surge is just gravy.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/270819-loku-a-defenseeulogy/

Jyn's Quick Draw ability is easy for the IP to play around, but Overwatch triggering on a move or attack makes it significantly harder to avoid.

udat - I agree with you, that is why I posted a similar thought earlier. I think it can depend a lot on the other heroes, the map, the imperial player units and such but that is true for so many specific abilities for many of the heroes. That does make it not the top of the list but I think it is better than originally rated.

1 hour ago, udat said:

I like this thread a lot, and appreciate all the thought and effort that went into it. It was also my inspiration for this post I made about Loku. Looking back at the Loku ratings on page 1, I wonder if the Overwatch card was completely misinterpreted? Overwatch is incredibly useful. Being able to bank an action when you don't have a compelling target, and spend it when you do is powerful in-and-of itself. The free surge is just gravy.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/270819-loku-a-defenseeulogy/

Jyn's Quick Draw ability is easy for the IP to play around, but Overwatch triggering on a move or attack makes it significantly harder to avoid.

Can you provide an example of when this was used well? I've never had Loku played at my table, but I also can't imagine what FFG was thinking with Overwatch. What's so useful about spending one action now to take one action later? A smart IP would be able to figure out who you are saving that attack for and use other figures to block LOS and play around it accordingly. Plus there's the opportunity cost of spending one of your two tokens on this when you could spend it on something else. At best, it seems like it's no more useful or difficult to play around than Quick Draw. The only upside seems to be that it doesn't cost any strain to do this, so maybe it would come in handy if you spend it right at the start of the mission.

Rather hard to block line of sight when it triggers when a figure declares an attack..as I said it depends on the map, but most maps don't have too many areas to block line of sight, especially if you position him smartly...And if you get Loku's other card (combat spotter) then his line of sight is not blocked by figures.

I don't know about your games, but when you have cleared out an area and all heroes are moved towards a door to go through, sometimes you have a spare movement that can be used to get the token.

1 hour ago, Pollux85 said:

Can you provide an example of when this was used well? I've never had Loku played at my table, but I also can't imagine what FFG was thinking with Overwatch. What's so useful about spending one action now to take one action later? A smart IP would be able to figure out who you are saving that attack for and use other figures to block LOS and play around it accordingly. Plus there's the opportunity cost of spending one of your two tokens on this when you could spend it on something else. At best, it seems like it's no more useful or difficult to play around than Quick Draw. The only upside seems to be that it doesn't cost any strain to do this, so maybe it would come in handy if you spend it right at the start of the mission.

As I mention in the linked thread, Overwatch was used to devastating effect in the finale of the Bespin Gambit mini campaign. The map/deployment point layout helped somewhat, in that Imperial forces were only really coming from one direction, but Overwatch was also useful on other missions.

It was so effective that I sometimes had both recon tokens on the Overwatch card. An imperial figure would activate (usually out of LOS - we also had Jyn in our team) and then move, coming into LOS of Loku and whoever their target was, and then when they tried to attack, Loku would erase them from existence. The free surge was handy as Loku had surge abilities for +2 damage and Pierce 2, and the free surge often meant he could use Study of Enemies (another skill the OP derided) to place the recon token he just spent when he triggered Overwatch on the figure he was attacking. That meant when he defeated them he could proc Mon Cala, and either recover 2 strain, or become focused. Then the next bad guy round the horn was walking into a 4-dice attack.

Overwatch was used to stop multiple figures from attacking, and was the only mechanism to do so, because it allowed us to interrupt and destroy the imperial figures after they had closed on us and come into LOS. The damage Loku prevented would probably have been enough to wound our two healthy heroes, losing us the mission.

22 minutes ago, udat said:

As I mention in the linked thread, Overwatch was used to devastating effect in the finale of the Bespin Gambit mini campaign. The map/deployment point layout helped somewhat, in that Imperial forces were only really coming from one direction, but Overwatch was also useful on other missions.

It was so effective that I sometimes had both recon tokens on the Overwatch card. An imperial figure would activate (usually out of LOS - we also had Jyn in our team) and then move, coming into LOS of Loku and whoever their target was, and then when they tried to attack, Loku would erase them from existence. The free surge was handy as Loku had surge abilities for +2 damage and Pierce 2, and the free surge often meant he could use Study of Enemies (another skill the OP derided) to place the recon token he just spent when he triggered Overwatch on the figure he was attacking. That meant when he defeated them he could proc Mon Cala, and either recover 2 strain, or become focused. Then the next bad guy round the horn was walking into a 4-dice attack.

Overwatch was used to stop multiple figures from attacking, and was the only mechanism to do so, because it allowed us to interrupt and destroy the imperial figures after they had closed on us and come into LOS. The damage Loku prevented would probably have been enough to wound our two healthy heroes, losing us the mission.

Thanks. It sounds like it might be less useful in more open spaces when you'd be facing people who were more than 2 spaces away, but this still clears up a lot about how to use Loku well. Like I said, I've never had him at my table so I'm not well versed on nuance to his abilities. I'll have to take all this into consideration when writing my guide on best ways to wound him.

58 minutes ago, Pollux85 said:

Thanks. It sounds like it might be less useful in more open spaces when you'd be facing people who were more than 2 spaces away, but this still clears up a lot about how to use Loku well. Like I said, I've never had him at my table so I'm not well versed on nuance to his abilities. I'll have to take all this into consideration when writing my guide on best ways to wound him.

I think Loku is actually suited more open maps. Our IP could use the two-square wide corridors of Bespin to frustrate LOS. Loku has amazing inherent accuracy, so is often shooting from 5+ squares away, and he'd be very effective on the large maps of say Hoth.

His inherent evade (assuming the player purchases Mon Cala special forces, but you'd be mad not to) and white dice means you are better off shooting him with figures that don't rely on surges for damage.

2 hours ago, udat said:

I think Loku is actually suited more open maps. Our IP could use the two-square wide corridors of Bespin to frustrate LOS. Loku has amazing inherent accuracy, so is often shooting from 5+ squares away, and he'd be very effective on the large maps of say Hoth.

His inherent evade (assuming the player purchases Mon Cala special forces, but you'd be mad not to) and white dice means you are better off shooting him with figures that don't rely on surges for damage.

When I play a character that has access to an ability which grants +1 evade, I lobby strongly for a Combat Coat. Loku becomes quite durable with Mon Cala Special Forces + Combat Coat.

Verena with combat coat + improvised cover becomes a very effective tank.

2 hours ago, udat said:

I think Loku is actually suited more open maps. Our IP could use the two-square wide corridors of Bespin to frustrate LOS. Loku has amazing inherent accuracy, so is often shooting from 5+ squares away, and he'd be very effective on the large maps of say Hoth.

His inherent evade (assuming the player purchases Mon Cala special forces, but you'd be mad not to) and white dice means you are better off shooting him with figures that don't rely on surges for damage.

Oh yeah. He would be more effective at killing others on a large outdoor map, but he'd also be easier to shoot from more than 2 spaces away, which denies him the strain restoration from Mon Cal Spec, which would make him easier to kill, I'd think. Do you agree?

1 minute ago, Pollux85 said:

Oh yeah. He would be more effective at killing others on a large outdoor map, but he'd also be easier to shoot from more than 2 spaces away, which denies him the strain restoration from Mon Cal Spec, which would make him easier to kill, I'd think. Do you agree?

I was wondering what you meant about the two spaces thing, but I think I understand - for the Study of Enemies token placing ability? You can place the token on anything within 2 spaces of the target, and the target is within 2 spaces of itself. Hopefully I haven't messed that rule up

1 hour ago, udat said:

I was wondering what you meant about the two spaces thing, but I think I understand - for the Study of Enemies token placing ability? You can place the token on anything within 2 spaces of the target, and the target is within 2 spaces of itself. Hopefully I haven't messed that rule up

Oh crap. You're right. It was me who would have messed up that rule. I was totally reading that wrong. Like I said, I haven't actually played against Loku. I'm not as well versed on his abilities. Would he still get the +1 damage from just applying the recon token on that attack, even though it got applied during the attack as well?

Either way, if he manages to take down the imperial unit on that attack, you're right. He's definitely getting back that 2 strain from Mon Cal Spec.

He wouldn't get the bonus damage during that attack, because the bonus damage is applied during step 4 "Apply Modifiers" and the token arrives in step 5, "Spend Surges".

You can also have this the other way around - you can shoot at a target that has a token, get the bonus damage, and then place the token with a surge on another figure within 2 spaces. The downside is that if you use the token on your initial target, you can't proc Mon Cala (because the token has gone when the figure is defeated), but you might have already exhausted that. Ideally you'd use your other token (he only has 2) so that both abilities trigger, but maybe your other token is tied up on a crate you want or another enemy figure.

The fact that there are only two figures is definitely a limiting factor, but I think it's well judged - even three tokens would make Loku a lot more flexible, and a lot more powerful, so I think 2 tokens is the right number. This gives Loku's player a lot of interesting decisions to make.

5 hours ago, udat said:

The fact that there are only two figures is definitely a limiting factor, but I think it's well judged - even three tokens would make Loku a lot more flexible, and a lot more powerful, so I think 2 tokens is the right number. This gives Loku's player a lot of interesting decisions to make.

It's always amazed me how limiting the two tokens feels on Loku. His skills are amazing, but with only two tokens you end up feeling like you'll never use them. No one in my group has picked him (yet) because of this. Two only feels limiting, and three would make him broken.

6 minutes ago, Uninvited Guest said:

It's always amazed me how limiting the two tokens feels on Loku. His skills are amazing, but with only two tokens you end up feeling like you'll never use them. No one in my group has picked him (yet) because of this. Two only feels limiting, and three would make him broken.

Yeah, three would be broken. In the early stages of the campaign, strain might prevent me from using both tokens at once. But once I had Mon Cala, Overwatch, and Study of Enemies, tokens were suddenly something I really had to think about how to use. Loku might be my favourite hero (not the strongest, but my favourite) and a big part of that is the decisions his design presents you with.

2 hours ago, udat said:

Yeah, three would be broken. In the early stages of the campaign, strain might prevent me from using both tokens at once. But once I had Mon Cala, Overwatch, and Study of Enemies, tokens were suddenly something I really had to think about how to use. Loku might be my favourite hero (not the strongest, but my favourite) and a big part of that is the decisions his design presents you with.

What do you think are his biggest weaknesses?

35 minutes ago, Pollux85 said:

What do you think are his biggest weaknesses?

His biggest weakness is that he has no abilities that grant movement. That's the big one I think. Almost every core hero has some mechanism that gives (or boosts) movement for themselves or others (tactical movement, sidewinder/opportunist/quick as a whip, disengage, charge, command/mobile tactician, force throw/art of movement).

That means Loku needs to take move actions, which means he isn't shooting things or banking tokens on Overwatch as often as he should. If Loku was in a squad with Gideon that problem would disappear, and Diala throwing him would also mitigate this significantly.

That's his only weakness really - he's a little squishy initially, but as noted higher up the thread by @machfalcon , with Mon Cala, Study of Enemies, and a combat coat, he's reasonably durable.