It does not state it should pierce

It does not state it should pierce but it is the only way I can think of to make it not be terrible vs normal ice crash.

1,370,000 Ice Crash without gem and with 80719 MD and 342.9% crit dmg = 5x
767,000 Ice crash with class gem and 80145 MD and 282.9% crit dmg = 3.4x or 3.5x

I never ever see this "cascading explosion" thing it is supposed to do. Once in a blue moon I will see one circle of ice crystals fly off an enemy but it's not very often.

Another terrible thing is while I am spamming it I can't drink a flask or use ice shield or any other ability, I can easily do this with normal ice crash spam. I have to stop and WAIT for like a full 1-2 seconds sometimes before I can finally do anything and this gets me killed.

The explosion coming off a snared enemy I think happens maybe one time then never again as far as I can tell. It's pretty terrible.

The real fix for this is to make the explosion happen but further more make the projectiles pierce in my opinion.

Edit: Also making it so you can activate ice shield or use a flask while.rapid firing would make the class gem comparable to the base skill. As it stands it's dangerous to use it because it can prevent ice shield being activated or using a flask.

Class gem is completely bad in terms of dps fighting multiple targets, because Ice Crash has AOE damage, but class gem skill spikes just hit one target. Class gem skill DPS is twice bigger if you target 1 enemy with all 3 spikes, but if this enemy is small you should get close to do full damage, which in most cases is dangerous. In additional - class gem skill animation is too long, when you spam it you can't use something another, like ability or flask. This class gem is good enough versus Shadow Tower Titans, but not anything else.