Main goal of this update is as follows:

1. reduce early game healing options to make early game more challenging.
2. Reduce damage of storm spells to be more in line for their AP costs.
3. Remove / limit the amount of skills that have abilities not commonly found in hydro / aero trees. (such as physical armor restore).
4. Reduce the amount of passive healing provided and move it into skills used mostly as a dedicated heal effect.
5. make the skills require more tactical positioning and planning.

So here goes!

GENERAL:

Plasmaburn damage reduced from 30 to 10. (30 is the damage burning deals a turn for comparison). Added 5% reduction to air and water resistances.


STORM SKILLS:

All storm skills no longer stack when cast multiple times.
All storm skills duration reduced to 6 turns (down from 8).
Misty Miasma damage reduced from 10 to 6. Healing reduced from 25 to 10.
Herald's Storm damage reduced from 10 to 6. Armor restore reduced from 30 to 15.
Gale-Force Winds - slow reduced to 15%, down from 25.
Blizzard damage reduced from 15 to 10. Now grants a single source point after 3 turns to all party members, instead of 2 points to non-caster allies.
Thousand Year storm now deals only air damage. Damage reduced from 26(combined from all 3 types) to 16. Passive buffs reduced by ~ 5% across the board.

Storm spells, when combined were dealing way too much damage, especially late game. Casting Miasma, Heralds, and Thousand year storm was the equivalent of dealing a tick of necrofire to every enemy each turn. On top of plasmaburn, and the already existent necrofire,burning and poison statuses, enemies just melted. Now, both Miasma and Herald storm do about the same amount of damage as combustion/or contamination to roughly 5 targets after 4 turns. Duration was reduced on all storm spells because most fights did not last anywhere close to 8 turns. Also, balance wise, the damage would have to be so small on the basic storm spells to account for an 8 turn duration.
Thousand year storm was being effected by multiple resistances, making it end up doing little to no damage in a lot of situations, which is why it now only deals air damage. Herald storm's armor restoration will now heal the same amount over its duration as soothing cold and mend metal combined.


TIER 1 SKILLS:

Plasma bolt - healing reduced from 25 to 15.
Thunder Surge - Heal effect removed. Instead, it now grants 20% life steal for two turns.
Storm Shield - Magic armor per turn increased to 35 (from 30). Heal per turn up to 80 (from 75).

Plasma bolt healing was reduced because, when combined with the incarnates version, it put out a lot of aoe burst healing in the early game. The change to Thunder Surge is two fold: 1. Herald's dont really have too strong of a self heal option. The life steal effect will work the moment the skill is cast allowing for a burst heal. 2. The aoe heal was just too strong on top of everything else. Instead the life steal encourages healing over time, which is more in line with the class identity. For storm shield, the heal now matches the restoration skill. I found the class was lacking in magic armor restoration, so i bumped Storm Shield up slightly.

TIER 2 SKILLS:

Glyph - Heal reduced to 30 (from 45).
Haze moved to TIER 2.
(Aqua nova moved to TIER 3)
Misty Step healing reduced to 20 (from 25).
Storm Beacon - NEW FUNCTIONALITY- Restore the targets magic armor for 2 turns. The target gains 100% resistance to air damage, stun and shock immunity. Enemies near your target take damage when the skill is cast, and again each turn the buff is active on your target. Still removes the same conditions.

The rework to storm beacon should now make it more likely to deal more damage, especially when cast on a tank who can stick to their target and position properly. The heal component has been removed to limit the amount of healing the class can put out in the early game. Aqua nova was moved for the same reason.

TIER 3:

Static shock ward - area of effect reduced by 1m. Max health buff reduced to 10% (from 20), lifesteal is now 15%. Duration and CD reduced by 1 turn.
Plasma Chain - Fixed issue with the healing aspect so it now behaves identically to chain heal. (it no longer will heal enemies).
Aqua Bolt - AP cost is now 3.
Aqua Nova Moved to tier 3 from tier 2. Area and cooldown increased by 1. Healing reduced to 30 (from 40)

Static ward was just too efficient considering its invulnerable and cant be destroyed. Its duration and large area made it very likely to hit the entire party constantly. Aqua bolt on paper deals the same amount of damage as fire whip and has an upside, so the AP cost was increased to match.

TIER 4:

Rumble of thunder - Bless duration reduced to 1 turn (down from 2).
Hydro Surge - RENAMED Icy Surge - NEW FUNCTIONALITY - Now targets a square a small distance away from the caster. Enemies in the area take damage and are frozen (ignores armor). Allies in the area still float.

Bless is a surprisingly strong buff, especially when its given to the whole party for free. More often than not, it blesses a fire surface, and proves a 35% resistance to fire for 2 turns. On top of the high resistances that was given by thousand year storm, the damage reduction became rediculous on some fights. Hydro surge was always a lackluster skill in my opinion. I wanted to make it more of a tactical skill, and the knockdown was out of place for the class identity. If used properly, the skill can potentially CC 3-5 people at once now, but requires proper positioning to make the square land where you want it to.

OTHER:

Added animations to Blizzard and Thousand -Year Storm.
Added missing cast prep animation.
Changed Hydro Surge animation to reflect new name (Icy Surge).

Added a radius indicator for the damage caused by Storm Beacon when casting the skill.

Fixed an issue where the torturer talent was delaying damage dealt by skills and extending buff durations that shouldn't be effected by the talent.

The goal of this update was to make the class more tactical by doing the following:

1. Make decay more of a detriment/hinderance.
2. Limit the effects that are not typically found in the trees in which the skills are located - Aerotheurge and Hydromancy.
3. Make the class less capable of being able to handle every situation on it's own, making potions and other items more viable and impactful.


In order to make the class more tactical, I've removed the ability to remove decay from Static Shield. In general, I felt like static shield was the "go to" single target heal over Storm beacon simply because of the 1 AP cost. As such, i removed its ability to restore physical armor and gave it to Storm Beacon. This accomplished two goals: it makes the two skills situationally better and makes the physical armor restore not normally found in the aero/hydro trees cost more.

Storm sprite was way to consistent at providing a large amount of armor quickly to the entire party. As such, the skill was changed to remove the physical armor boost based on the philosophies above.

From playtesting, aqua nova was way to consistent at healing the entire party for a lot of health given the fact it also does a lot of damage in the process. The healing from aqua nova actually was greater than the healing put out from storm shield, which is the dedicated heal skill. In most other games, this isn't usually good balance practices. As such, i reduced the aoe size to make the skill less consistent at hitting the whole party and the duration of the heal. I may lower it further in the future after more play testing, but I will have to see.

Aqua Bolt also seemed too consistent at restoring a lot of physical armor to the party, which is typically a limitation of the hydromancy tree from the base game. As such, I've removed the physical armor restore on this skill.

Skill changes:

t1
Storm Sprite - no longer grants physical armor.
Static Shield - Removed physical armor restore and decay removal.
t2
Storm Beacon - Removed Magical Armor restore.
Aqua Nova - Healing reduced to 2 turns instead of 3. Reduced AoE size slightly.
t3
Aqua Bolt - No longer gives physical armor.


Renamed some of the skillbooks to reflect the name of the skill and remove underscores. (i.e. "Aqua Nova Skillbook" instead of "Aqua_Nova_Skillbook_Cheat")

Plasmaburn now respects magic armor, and benefits from the torturer talent.

Fixed an issue where thundersurge didnt heal properly.
updated buff names when applied to a player.
fixed beacon bolt to properly increase the targets damage.
Fixed an issue where plasma chain was hurting undead instead of ignoring them. Now it heals undead.

Added a storm sprite instead of incarnate to the summon skill.

Update to animations.

Fixed and issue with the cheat chest only showing level 1 books.

Updated character creation preset to use the wizard instead of ranger.

Made the sprite do water damage for basic attacks.
Added a cheat chest to the fort joy beach near the beach waypoint.
Thousand-Year Storm party bonuses reduced to 10% - down from 15%
Added a 1AP cost to all storm spells.