Gedonia 2 v0.31.3 episode 29, more testing vs elite guards

Earth mage's new stone fist spells to pummel through enemies. Revisiting archery with new arrows that deal double damage and pierce armor. Nightmare difficulty. How do these playstyles fair?

First, earth magic. Great burst damage. Stonefall is great for an incendiary build since most of the damage is from the afterburn. Spawn in a rock to throw into an enemy's head repeatedly.

Stone Fist has damage output on par with banditry's fully upgraded powerful bombs, except those bombs have a longer effective cooldown (72 seconds per 1 resource = 1 powerful bomb item, vs Stone Fist's cooldown being 45 seconds after you spend the last stack. Bandit bombs can be stocked up ahead of time instead of only having one interval at a time so it's still better if you're not engaged in combat most of the time, since you'll be generating resource passively over time. If you're in an arena, earth magic's Stone Fist is better because you don't have to deal with a menu that covers your screen and more frequent activation.

Incendiary cloth armor, earth magic, and banditry for the poison and grappling hook skills. I think 4agi 3int would be better since you'd have upgraded powerful bombs.

Second, archery. I don't like most of the skills in this talent and have whined about it on the Discord channel for Gedonia many times. Maybe you can find a use for those kicking, evasion/sliding, and those passives for keeping yourself jumping perpetually in the air, skills. I'll stick with grappling hook instead of all that nonsense.