Suggestions

So, there's a big issue with Anticipate.

It's *extremely* situational. It has the potential to net you massive breath, even more than meditate, without meditate's downside... but it depends on you getting hit by the enemy for you to benefit from it.

For physical builds, it's a waste of a turn if you're facing enemies can be 1-shot or 2-shot defeated with scratch+eliminate, which is most enemies, and you already have enough breath to do so. For both physical and mage builds, it's a waste of a turn if used on the first turn against meditate-using enemies. Because you only get one energy-stone slot, it's simply not worth the risks in the face of Scratch and Meditate's more reliable benefits.

Furthermore, because Coli's meta simply doesn't support "pure tanks", and because there are no "tank build" Augment stones ala Scholar or Berserker, it seems as though all tank dragons are meant to be Tank/Fighter or Tank/Mage hybrids, anyways.

Currently, many players simply refresh the page when they encounter bosses during grinding. If bosses exist to break up the monotony of eliminate-spam, and people are simply choosing to *avoid* fighting them in response, it seems bosses have failed as a measure to encourage varied tactics.

Anticipate is bad against most mobs. But it has the potential to be very good for survivability and breath-gathering against bosses, who hit hard and take a longer time to kill. Yet there's no way to reliably make sure an Anticipate-dragon only faces bosses. Plus, doing chip-damage against bosses with Scratch, while grueling, is kind of... necessary?

Being able to use both Scratch and Anticipate, or both Meditate and Anticipate, could also help with survivability when grinding in especially tough venues, such as the Golem Workshop.

Currently, Coli lacks much in the way of strategic choice. Currently, certain energy stones see much less use than others. Currently, facing bosses is such a royal pain that many players will simply refresh the page when they encounter them, rather than engage.

I want to know other players' thoughts on this proposed solution.

Support, but I think even this is too conservative. You unlock Augment stones at level 17, let this unlock at level 20, and allow for even more customization in the coliseum.

I will never be opposed to more coli customization.

I'm here for this, it would definitely help to break the monotony of coli. In general, support for more battlestones being viable.

I think what would be more useful for Anticipate builds is to add an "Enmity" stone, either as an Accessory stone or perhaps an Attack stone.

That way, Tank builds have a way of pulling enemy attacks and being, well, tanky.

"Guard" kinda basically does this but it would be way nicer to have it as a passive Accessory too so it doesn't take up an attack slot.

I wouldn't ever be opposed to more options, honestly, but I feel like this wouldn't actually make people use Anticipate more. Bosses are refreshed on for most 2-fodder trainers, not just for being annoying but because the exp gain isn't worth the time spent killing the boss even if you're prepared. If a dragon could have two energy stones people would just run Meditate for the quick first battle setups and then Scratch to recover from misses or even just to attack. Farming builds / full teams would maybe see more diversity, but those never had issues with bosses anyway.
Any accessory stone that would buff the effects of Anticipate would see little use because Ambush is just so strong and also necessary to get anything more than 1 or 2 turns at a time for a single dragon. The balancing issues with the Coli run a bit deeper than just the fact that one of the three energy stones is so niche. Introducing diversity for the sake of diversity will have little effect on the "meta" when the dominant strategy continues to be dominant. This isn't a PvP game where the meta can change simply due to a player refining one particular strategy others hadn't considered.

I'd rather see an aggro-generating stone or Anticipate tweaked to make it more likely for enemies to attack that dragon. No support for major changes like two energy stones - there's much simpler and less chaotic ways to balance things out.

Support

[quote name="Vendrus" date="2021-06-21 08:03:27" ] I'd rather see an aggro-generating stone or Anticipate tweaked to make it more likely for enemies to attack that dragon. No support for major changes like two energy stones - there's much simpler and less chaotic ways to balance things out. [/quote] ^This. Right now Anticipate is kind of a waste, I'd like to see it actually do the thing it's supposed to do.

[quote name="Halcandra" date="2021-06-21 05:29:02" ] I wouldn't ever be opposed to more options, honestly, but I feel like this wouldn't actually make people use Anticipate more. Bosses are refreshed on for most 2-fodder trainers, not just for being annoying but because the exp gain isn't worth the time spent killing the boss even if you're prepared. [/quote] So, what [i]would[/i] be the best way to get people to engage with Coli bosses? Increasing the EXP gain from defeating a boss? Also - I don't think that tweaking Anticipate to make it draw agro is mutually exclusive with this proposal! I [i]do[/i] think buffing Anticipate itself would probably be better than giving it a new augment stone, though, unless that augment stone was able to seriously compete with Anticipate. I [i]personally[/i] find 2x Discipline+Meditate to have greater benefits than 2x Ambush+Meditate for mage builds, but I know I'm in the minority there.