PBM should be baseline for Holosmith

Photon Forge stands out as the only mechanic in the game that outright punishes you for failing to use it correctly, whether you don't utilize otherwise drastically underpowered exceed skills or overheat and be completely locked out of your mechanic, your minor traits, and probably down yourself. Considering that cancelling PF is instant, it's not even like you could force a Holosmith to explode by CCing them near the heat cap, it's completely up to the user.

Photonic Blasting Module takes this explosion mechanic and works it into a key part of your attack set, and I believe that Holosmith would be far more interesting if this was a baseline mechanic. Instead of a massive punishment that can easily occur if you accidentally activate PF, it becomes a key decision making point, do you refrain from exploding to maintain high heat or do you choose to explode at this moment for burst damage in exchange for PF access for a bit? Making PBM baseline would do wonders for the feel of the spec, making those times where you feel like you have to overheat (generally because you needed to knockdown a mob) into an enjoyable experience where the thought that "I made the right choice" supercedes "Well no one else was going to do it."

The new baseline functionalities would be as follows:

-You explode during overheat.-The explosion deals damage and causes a blast finisher around you.-You only take initial damage from the explosion.-You take damage first (immediately rally if you kill something with the explosion.)-Minor traits remain active during forced cooldown.

And the new Photonic Blasting Module would add the following:

-Heat does not decay-Increase explosion damage and radius-Take no damage from the explosion

The other two grandmaster major traits are centered around NOT blowing yourself up when possible, reducing heat and increasing heat cap (and time to explode) while PBM remains the go to for blowing yourself up as fast as possible, only now it removes EVERY downside to blowing up rather than just the initial damage.

PBM shouldn't be baseline, but the damaging explosion should be (amplifying the high risk of the spec by offering a "detonate yourself" option for burst damage). One of my major disappointments with PBM is that it removes the downsides to detonating while providing the reason to want to do such a thing in the first place.

PBM could still increase explosion damage to the current value (which may be too high as a baseline function), remove self damage and enable activation of Laser's Edge and Heat Therapy. Hell, it could even remove the DoT too for all I care. But any effect besides the explosion should not be added to the core function of the profession, like coolant blast neither cooling or blasting, detonating the Photon Forge not causing an explosion makes no sense.

Blowing yourself up still shouldn't be the goal of anyone not running PBM.

@HotHit.6783 said:PBM shouldn't be baseline, but the damaging explosion should be (amplifying the high risk of the spec by offering a "detonate yourself" option for burst damage). One of my major disappointments with PBM is that it removes the downsides to detonating while providing the reason to want to do such a thing in the first place.

PBM could still increase explosion damage to the current value (which may be too high as a baseline function), remove self damage and enable activation of Laser's Edge and Heat Therapy. Hell, it could even remove the DoT too for all I care. But any effect besides the explosion should not be added to the core function of the profession, like coolant blast neither cooling or blasting, detonating the Photon Forge not causing an explosion makes no sense.

Blowing yourself up still shouldn't be the goal of anyone not running PBM.

I understand most of what you say but it boils down to this simple question: why do you punish Holosmith with no significant upside to having the risk of being punished?, you don't do above average damage, you don't bring above average utility so what's the reason?