Yeah, I generally use them to get to the NPC cities. But that's just another reason to go naked, so you can hopefully go under the radar to get to the bindstone before killed. Mind you if you're just doing maps, do you even need to bind/go near the chaos stone?

I guess it's more of a matter of where/why you're going if you should use the shards vs runestones.

Runestones are a lot better then shards, so I'd personally try not to waste them if I can help it.

And for what it's worth. I often use the portal chamber on Yssam to get to the portal chamber in dwarf lands, you basically land next to the safezone, so it's an easy city to port into from our lands. Even if someone was camping it you could probably get into the safezone before being killed.