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Okay, as much as it may wound you, you can't just kill of characters to 'make people sad' or 'because the character is useless to the story'. You want to kill a character for good reasons. Like how Loki died, having finally completed his arc from good, to bad, to good again.
Killing off someone for the sake of killing them is not good writing. Good writing is killing of a character when they're so close to completing their goal. Killing a character is snatching their dreams away before they could defeat the bad guy. It has to mean something. It can't just be because you feel like it.
Here are the good reasons to kill off a character:
It advances the plot. (Melanie in Gone With the Wind)
It fulfils the doomed character's personal goal. (Obi Wan in A New Hope)
It motivates other characters. (Uncle Ben in Spiderman)
It's a fitting recompense for the character's actions up to this point. (Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights)
It emphasises the theme. (Everybody in Flowers of War)
It creates realism within the story world. (Everybody in The Great Escape)
It removes an extraneous character. (Danny in Pearl Harbour)
Bad reasons to kill a character:
Shocking readers just for the sake of shocking them. (Shock value isn't without its, well, value, but not every author is Alfred Hitchcock and not every story is Psycho)
Making readers sad just for the sake of making them sad. (An old saw says, "If they cry, they but." But readers never appreciate being tortured without reason)
Removing an extraneous character. (Yes, this is also a good reason. But double check. If the character is extraneous, first verify he really belongs in the story in the first place)
