Shard strike - does the bleed increase?

[Gaulin]

Simple question, wondering how people interpret the heightening on shard strike; does the heighten effect apply to the possible bleed damage on crit, or just to the initial effect. The heighten effect simply says increase the damage by 1d6 every two levels, and while I usually err on the side of caution and pick the less strong interpretation, I'm curious what the general consensus is, if there is one. In pathbuilder at least, the bleed does not seem to heighten.

[Baarogue]

Yes, I would raise the bleed damage too

[NorrKnekten]

With how it is written, it doesn't.

Abilities whose persistent damage component heighten typically say that, Or atleast say that both the damage and persistent damage increases. 1d6 persistent per 'spell-rank' for an AoE effect also sounds incredibly strong for an aoe ability that is at will.

[Easl]

I'd say no, neither the bleed nor the clumsy increase. As Norr says, Paizo is good about listing how those extra things increase when they do. No listing = no increase.

Note that this impulse is already quite good for a non-overflow one. Comparing it to the other two-action, non-overflow impulses, it does higher straight-up damage than boomerang and winter's clutch at level 5+, does the same as flying flame (without the single gate benefit), and is the only one that allows for change of AoE shape and damage type.

[Nelzy]

NorrKnekten and Easl is correct,

the bleed is not increased, even if the bleed was not a crit effect it would not be increased since it dont say its increased.

[Tridus]

That's correct, the persistent dmage does not increase:

Shard Strike wrote:

Level (+2) The damage increases by 1d6.

If it did, it would be listed there. For an example of how it would look if it did scale, see Needle Darts:

Needle Darts wrote:

Heightened (+1) You send one additional needle, increasing the regular damage by 1d4 and increasing the persistent bleed damage on a critical hit by 1.