Adeon Hawkwood

The Weekly Strike Target is a a Task Force that is designated each week. The first time you run it that week on a given character you will get double the reward merits and either a Notice of the Well (if you have your alpha slot unlocked) or 5 bars of experience (if you are less than level 50.

The devs announce the WSTs a few weeks in advance in this thread:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=251519

It also gets put up on the frint page of the wiki:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Main_Page

Both actually. There are essentially three tiers to the Incarnate Content (at the moment)
Tier 1 (Shards): The old level 50 content (ITF, LGTF, STF/LRSF, Khan/Barracuda, CoP, Mothership Raid, Hamidon) plus the Weekly Strike Target
Tier 1.5 (Shards + Threads): Apex and Tin Mage
Tier 2 (Threads + Incarnate XP): Lambda and BAF trials

Running the Tier 1 content will get you shards and shard-based components (you can actually get shards from any content but the content listed also gives components or extra shards). The only requirement is to have your Alpha Slot unlocked.

Running the Tier 1.5 content will give you a few shards and a few threads but it is a lot less efficient than either the T1 or T2 content so I wouldn't bother with it for now. It requires you to have a boost (of any rarity) slotted into your Alpha slot.

Running the Tier 2 content will give you threads and thread-based components as well as Incarnate XP to unlock the slots above Alpha. The only requirement is to be level 50.


Now what do I mean by Shards, Threads and Components?

Once you have unlocked a slot you need to place a boost in it. Boosts are manufactured from components. The exact components needed depends on the boost but the rarity of the components is the same for all boosts:
Tier 1 Boost: 3 Common Components
Tier 2 Boost: 1 Tier 1 Boost + 1 Uncommon Component + 2 Common Components
Tier 3 Boost: 1 Tier 2 Boost + 1 Rare Component + 2 Common Components
Tier 4 Boost: 2 Tier 3 Boosts + 1 Very Rare Component + 1 Uncommon Component + 1 Common Component

The Alpha Slot boosts can be made using either Shard based components or thread based components but the other four slots can only use thread based components.


Getting Shard Components:
Common Component: 4 Shards or run a specific TF (see below)
Uncommon Component: Crafted from Common Component + 8 Shards
Rare Component (Notice of the Well): Run the Weekly Strike Target (max 1 per week)
Very Rare Component (Favor of the Well): Crafted from 2 x Notice of the Well + 32 Shards

In addition the old level 50 tasks give a specific common component as an option instead of reward merits:
ITF: Ancient Nictus Fragment
LGTF: Hero 1 Blood Sample
STF/LRSF: Essence of the Incarnate
Khan/Barracuda: Dimensional Keystone
CoP: Penumbra of Ralaruu
Hamidon Raid: 4 Shards

In addition, 150 Vanguard Merits can be traded for a Grai'Matter (limit once every 18 hours).


Getting Thread Components:

Successfully completing the Lambda or BAF will give you an Empyrean Merit (one per day per trial) and a component, additionally you will earn threads and Astral Merits while doing it. The component is semi-random, the game selects a component rarity at random and you can choose any component from that rarity.

In addition you can craft components:
Common Component: 20 Threads
Uncommon Component: 60 Threads
Rare Component: 8 Astral Merits
Very Rare Component: 30 Astral Merits

You can also craft Rare/Very Rare components form Uncommon Components + Threads + Inf but this is not a particularly efficient method.

Finally Empyrean and Astral Merits can be exchanged for additional threads. Empyrean Merits yield 20 threads but you're probably better off saving them for Rare/Very Rare Components. Astral Merits yield 4 threads and currently that is their only function although according to the devs we will eventually be able to buy other things with them.

In terms of efficiency if you have a good team that can speed TFs the level 50 TFs probably the best way to get the Alpha Boost. If you don't then I'd say do the trials to get the components to make a Tier 2 Alpha Boost (and pick up some incarnate XP while you're at it) but run the WST and a couple of other TFs to get the Tier 3 Boost. Thread based Rare components are expensive so even if you get a lucky drop I'd save it for the other slots. Once you have a T3 Alpha leave it alone and start running Trials to get components for the other slots.

Getting a T3 in all five slots should be your first goal. The T3 requires about 25% of the effort of a T4 but is about 75% as effective. In particular for the Alpha, Lore and Destiny slots it provides a Level Shift which is a huge bonus so focus on those slots first. Judgment and Interface get smaller benefits from the higher tiers so consider leaving them with just a Tier 1 boost until you have Tier 3s in the other slots.

I've been doing pre-mades exclusively (sometimes supplemented by one or two randoms from a queue) however I don't actually put any effort into building the team, I just invite whomever wants to come from global channels and broadcast so team composition is somewhat random.

I think the advantage of pre-mades in many ways is psychological. By joining the team before hand people have de-facto accepted the team for the duration of the trial which fosters a sense of unity and encourages players to work together. Additionally since it takes a few minutes to form the league you get a bit of chit-chat beforehand which, again, helps foster the idea of being a team rather than a random group of individuals. It also ensures that at least one person on the team is willing to provide direction.

If you get one of the challenge badges in the trials you get a random uncommon component as a reward.

Huh, that's weird. How many threads did it offer?

Pretty much. A League has 2-6 teams each with 1-8 members. so the size of a league is 2-48. It's important to note though that the two new trials both sets limits on maximum league size that are lower than this (16 for Lambda and 24 for BAF).

Yeah my plan for explaining the new powers on my AR/Dev is along those lines:

Pyronic Judgement: Incendiary Grenades
Reactive Interface: Incendiary Bullets
Rebirth Destiny: Nanite Healing Swarm

The Lore is a little trickier, I eventually decided it's going to be some Praetorian Resistance Allies teleporting in to help him. I haven't made up my mind if it's going to be the Praetorian version of him (who would be a renegade IDF Commander) or some Seers that he rescued.

However for the Caridac Alpha the lore is that he figured out a way to tap into the power of the well and use it as a supplementary power source for his armor.

3.) Concentration of buffs and debuffs.

It can make the difference between having perma-hasten or not but the effectiveness is still about 75%.

Assuming you're ED capped the Core Paragon provides:
45 * (2/3) + 45 * (1/3) * 0.15 = 32.5%

The Total Core Revamp provides:
45 * (1/2) + 45 * (1/2) * 0.15 = 25.875%

So the primary aspect of the T3 is about 80% as effective as the T4. The overall ability I would say is about 75% as effective since the T4 provides a large boost to other aspects. Hence why I say don't stress getting the T4. It's nice to have but it takes a lot of effort to go from T3 to T4 and if you decide to pass you aren't missing much.

EDIT: For the heck of it how much difference does it actually make in terms of seconds? Let's assume best case scenario for the T4: you have 95% recharge enhancement in hasten and no other recharge bonuses. If I did my math right the difference between the T3 and the T4 is the difference between Hasten recharging in 161 seconds and 165.7 seconds so a difference of 4.7 seconds.

You should be able to. I did some experimentation a while back and was able to solo him on my TA/A defender without using any of my Trick Arrow Powers or any Temporary Powers, I did use a lot of inspirations though.

That is correct. Now the reason for it is a little weird, but does make sense if you look at it correctly. The T3 boost is intended to be the "standard" boost with the T4 being the extra-special boost. As such the T3 boost costs about 25% of the resources of the T4 boost but provides about 75% of the benefit.

I guess my point is don't stress out to much about getting the T4 boost. It's intended to take about three times the effort to go from T3 to T4 as it did to go from nothing to T3 but the benefit provided is relatively small.

That would be a humongous pop-up . Still it's probably a good way of handling it.

Are you doing any of the other challenges, specifically:
Defeat Siege & Nightstar without moving them from their initial locations during a Behavioral Adjustment Facility Incarnate Trial.
Defeat Siege & Nightstar while none of their reinforcements are alive during a Behavioral Adjustment Facility Incarnate Trial.

Alternatively you mentioned you were farming them, could it be that you get an Astral Merit instead of an E Merit if that's on cooldown? I'll admit this is a wild guess, I could see it being set up that way but haven't seen anything to suggest that it actually is.

I know, Master Zaprobo was talking about the base Astrals though. In any case, that was why I mentioned the challenges. I figure there's a good chance he got the 3 standard ones plus a bonus one for doing the "don't turn off the turrets" challenge.

Hmmm... Arbiter Hawk says 3:
Were you doing the challenge settings?

You cannot make the original Alpha slot components with threads. However you can use the new thread-based components to make Alpha Slot Boosts.

The original Shard-based components still remain available for making alpha boosts but cannot be used for the new slots (except through the shard to thread conversion recipe).

Yeah, as I mentioned I wasn't sure about that one and based on Arbiter Hawk I was mis-remembering. I knew I got 3, I just forgot for what .

Overall I agree, the BAF is easier to get Astral Merits in.

The Astral Merits are awarded for successfully completing one of the trial stages (except for the first stage which awards nothing and the last stage which awards an Empyrean Merit). The difference is that in the BAF failing a stage automatically fails the Trial as well but in the Lambda failing certain stages doesn't end the trial.

In the BAF you get Astral Merits for three things:
1. Killing Nightstar the first time
2. Stopping the prisoners from escaping
3. Killing Seige the first time

I've only done Lambda once and it was some time ago but I thought you also got three astral merits:
1. Defeating the Security Bot
2. Collecting all 10 molecular acids
3. Collecting all 10 pacification grenades

Now I'm not 100% sure about the security bot one, I thought I got one then but I could be wrong. In any case my main point was that to get Astral Merits during stage 3 of the Lambda Trial you have to collect 10 of the same temp power. However failing to get 10 of a power doesn't fail the trial entirely, it just makes the last stage harder which means you can get further with fewer Astral Merits.