Our general M.O. is to ninja camps, snipe dolyaks and harass enemy forces. My short list of options was Mesmer or SB Thief. I toyed around with the idea of Guardian, but quickly dismissed that one.
Assuming Piercing Shots works like Mesmer GS #1, I am sure it works OK. I just would not trait for it. In my experience, that situation just does not present itself often enough.
TA was nerfed about the same time AC was buffed, so it is no where near what it used to be.
I would recommend starting on Up. It is the shortest path and is not really tricky. After that, probably Forward-Forward. It is a harder path, but is still pretty simple. Since they nerfed Leurent, there is not any reason to avoid this path. Forward-Up has two tricky parts that can stall some groups. There is the sap/bees trap and the spiders at the final boss.
And personally, I no longer do "skip" runs with PUG's in TA. Virtually every time one or two people cannot make it and the run ends up taking longer than a full clear.
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