Honestly he seems like he's mainly going to be another arena champ. Which, for the record, I'm totally fine with Plarium doing - this is exactly how they should keep the meta fresh. But, given his moves are all based around him being under a Veil/PerfectVeil, and that he can only do that for himself once per round, I'm not seeing him being super valuable in Hydra / etc - unless you can find a way to exploit the second part of his passive where he drops low on hp?

I agree with the arena-first assessment.  I think Evade is designed as a partial counter to Armanz...one more weapon for people to use...   

Yep, seems like he is there to counter Armanz. The thing with Armanz though, is that even if you avoid his CC he is still going to steal your turn meter. 

What will be incredibly powerful is the A3 into the A2. He is going to steal your stoneskin, take your turn meter, and then block your skills and buffs. He will be good to use against a Heph team. 

All that aside Armanz is still stupidly better. He steals the turn meter from everyone on the other side and stuns them. Then he goes again and his sheep will strip all of the other team's stoneskins. 

The one place that I brought up this guy where he will be really good is on a team with UKD and WuKong. 

He won't steal your Stoneskin. Especially not if you're also smart enough to run Lightning Cage. You've only a 25% chance of getting the steal. Remember that Stoneskin and Lightning Cage both happen *before* resist checks.

Lightning Cage feels like it has seriously gone up in value in the current meta

Loki has a lot of value in Hydra *With Certain Setups. That definitely requires a asterisk. Pairing him with Mikage is gonna be really good, keeps him in Veil longer and double debuff extend is always good. I can even see making high use of Shamael + Crohnam's Passive for his A2 ramping up and having lots and lots of HP Burns to activate or other activators like Artak.

The problem is he needs to be Manually controlled, but if you don't have Shamwow you can use Loki to get the Fear Head down without too much trouble. 

The problem is really his A2. At the start of the fight, if he's the 2nd to go he can do AOE block buffs but after that it's RNG what he spreads. Same for Perfect Veil on allies being spread. 

One thing that can be overlooked is Debuff Spread and Decap'd heads. Since you have to re-apply debuffs to decap'd heads, he can (potentially) quickly get Dec def and weaken back out on the decap heads if the debuffs are present on another head.

How does he pair well with Mikage? I don't see anything in her kit that would let him re-veil once the initial veil expires? Unless you mean because of the buff extender, but that's literally just the first two turns of the fight. Beyond that, he's only getting his veil back if he drops under 50% HP, which to me feels like a dangerous game to try to intentionally play around, especially on auto - and even then, it'll only activate once every four turns.

I'm not sure you're right about his 50% HP Perfect Veil, that is part of his Passive Ability section, not the Active. That's also likely why it's only 1 turn. The 4 Turn CD is the 100% Evade, as I understand it. So yes, Mikage's Buff Extension will continuosly help during the fight.

Also dropping below 50% is pretty common for the average player, especially when Wrath head takes a turn with 300% bonus dmg. 

"He only gets his veil back if he drops under 50%" also gotta disagree, his A2 places Perfect Veil and he can target himself (It explicitly says so in the ability "If the target is an ally or this Champion"), which he may then Spread since he is now under Perfect Veil. In fact, he may be the ONLY Champion that can Full Team Perfect Veil since most AOE Perfect Veil do everyone but themselves.

Always been good, definitely higher value now.

Fair points, and I 100% missed the fact that he can just buff himself. I take back everything I said :)

To be fair, his A2 is still confusing and I'm not 100% sure about the buff spread based on how it does the order of the ability. It could do the spread based on if he has Veil BEFORE activating the ability, so even if he places the Veil on himself as part of it, it still may not spread. I just got Loki today because I missed a few login days and I haven't had a chance to test it.

Speaking of Order of a Ability, Mikage does something very interesting with her A2 on Fear Head. Since the damage happens first, then the Debuff Duration Decrease on all allies, if she hits the Fear Head and gets fear from the damage of the A2, it immediately removes the Fear by reducing it's duration. She does a decent job as Fear Cleanser (not to mention cleansing your Top ATK champ at the start of her turn)