Pierce spell - A contradiction?

[Rurik]

Yeah, speedart is pretty f'd up at the moment.

I plan on using it pretty much the same as the old way (probably keep the -15 to dodge/parry rather than + to hit).

 

[Gnarsh]

I also simply assumed that it is both progressive and has a duration (presumably the same as multimissile).

It just makes more sense to assume that someone goofed when writing the spell description. I would be really cautious about trying to be too literal when interpreting any of these rules. There are a *lot* of mistakes in the rulebook right now.