I've seen a fair bit of negativity towards Loku in the forums (although not purely so, he's not Biv...) but I think he was the reason we won our campaign finale last night. We were playing Bespin with the ISB Infiltrators forced mission. Going into the final mission, the Rebels had not won a single mission. A couple had been close, and a couple had been complete bloodbaths (*cough* Panic in the Streets). We employed the "anti-snowball" house rule in the final story mission, so the Rebels had 11XP (IP had 12).

Loku had been effective throughout the campaign; dealing reliable damage, providing extra damage for other heroes, and providing free crate retrieval, but it was Overwatch that really shone in the finale. The IP was playing Imperial Black Ops, and played "Hired Help" in the finale, so there was an abundance of Hunters. Overwatch prevented attacks from:

A focused Elite Clawdite Streetrat who attacks with RBGY, with a surge for an additional unblockable Red
A focused Elite Weequay
Two focused regular Weequays
Focused Bossk
An Elite Jawa

As well as stopping all of that damage, it also made it much much harder for the Imperial to use Strategic Redeployment and drop additional enemies on us mid-round. Something we'd learned was extremely powerful in previous missions. The attacks he stopped would have been enough to wound the two rebels who got to the end of the mission un-wounded (Jyn and Murne), so I honestly don't think we could have won the mission without Overwatch.

The map did suit Overwatch, in that the IP was limited in where he could deploy, which meant we could have Loku cover everyone effectively.

Loku's build, in the order purchased:

Scouting Report (1) Mon Cala (4) Combat Spotter (1) Overwatch (2) Study of Enemies (3)
Kit in the finale: A-12 Sniper rifle, Plasma Cell, Sniper Scope, Extra Ammo, Combat Coat

That's a lot of credits invested in Loku, but his abilities meant we picked up maybe 500 extra credits in the campaign, mitigating this somewhat. With the A-12, recon tokens, focus, and access to the bonus surges from the Sniper Scope and Overwatch he was putting out 7+ damage per attack, so anything he drew a bead on pretty much died instantly. It didn't come up, but he could also have cancelled any dodges that the IP rolled with that rifle.

As a side note, the Sniper Scope was excellent - better than the Tac Display on Loku I think. He got bonus surge from that almost every attack, and sometimes 3 times per round (if Waylay was used by Murne).

In summary, Loku is great. He might not be S class, but he's very, very good. If he was with someone who could move him into position (Gideon, or maybe Diala) he'd be even more effective.

One of our players took Overwatch but never uses it because he just wants to shoot at everything when it’s his turn, so now I’m always trying to figure out how to make it useful for us.

I think with the recent preview of Kanan I finally understand what makes Overwatch useful. Being able to basically gain precognition and killing a figure in the group that is going to activate next is a strong tempo play. It also allows Loku to work around the annoying end of activation restriction on placing recon tokens if he didn’t start his activation with LOS to his target. However it really needs Combat Spotter to be useful, otherwise it’s too easy for the Imp to counterplay the same way they counter Jyn’s QuickDraw.

I will definitely consider Overwatch over spectrum scanner the next time I play Loku.

I hadn't read about Kanan, but I can see some synergy there. It would be fun to play that combo for sure.

Combat Spotter helps enormously with both placing recon tokens and then attacking that figure, but they aren't essential to using Overwatch. There were times when I had both tokens on the Overwatch card. Because Overwatch triggers when the Imperial takes the move or attack action it was far harder for our IP to "play around" than Jyn's quick-draw ability. We had her in our party as well, but if she wasn't adjacent to the target, it could often be avoided.

Has your Loku never been in a situation where the things he wants to shoot are out of LoS (say round a corner)? With Overwatch he can bank the action, so that anything that comes round the corner and attacks gets a blaster bolt to the noggin. Even just the threat of Overwatch made our Imperial player behave more cautiously and helped the Rebels avoid some attacks.

Just like over the course of a campaign, there can be a bit of a snowball effect, the same is true in missions and even in a single round. Getting an early lead in a mission by removing a lot of the Imperial figures from the board makes it difficult for the Imperial player to get the mission back under control. Overwatch and other attacks outside of a hero's activation help to maintain that advantage once it's achieved. Often when a lot of Imperial figures are removed, the Imperial player will attempt to get back into control of the mission by flooding the board when an event brings other deployments into play. Overwatch allows the Rebels to really mitigate that impact and keep the flow of the mission in their favor. I'm sure anyone who's played as a Rebel has had the situation where you're close to the end of a round and debating whether to open the door with the last activation or just waste an action or two. Being able to "bank" an attack can be very impactful in cases like these.

I really like Loku when fighting large, heavily armored targets. AT-STs, Weiss, Tanks, etc. don't last nearly as long with him.

Dedicated snipers definitely have their time and place. They aren't as consistent as the S-tier characters, but under the right circumstances they can be an absolute terror.

So, it's been a few months since this happened and I can't remember exactly what happened ... but ...

I was imperial and my brother had built Mak anchored to the DXR-6. His build was a heavy investment money sink, but end of day he had something like 10 range no question. With the insane power output and figure ignoring aspects he was able to OHKO any figure at will. Mak was paired with some brawlers I wasn't able to get close enough even with swarm tactics. It was bad enough I was having to position my forces entirely based around Mak's line of sight. I could only imagine doing a Loku build with the same tactic would be equally devastating (if not more so).

´DXR-6 doesn't have a mod slot, so he would depend on focused and Target Acquired (once per activation), Hera, Macrobinoculars (once per mission) to get more than 6 accuracy.

Loku is my favorite character to play as and hasn’t been on a losing team in my game group so far.

I was fortunate enough to win his reward mission one campaign and things went wayyy downhill for the IP after that.

Loku made a fantastic jedi using the ancient Lightsaber.

I get that he has a good insight pool, but was there anything else about him that helped? None of his abilities seem all that applicable.

I could see Murne wrecking people with that weapon and Lead from the Front.