Erm, I mean, I usually do pick fire in the hole myself, just showing why it's not an autopick. I don't need to be convinced that fire in the hole is good.If you have a pure (or close to pure) high aim rocket technical, a Rifle is far more compelling. The SMG is only really good if you want to maximise Flame Thrower use because you've maximised your flame thrower uses.
Fire in the Hole comboes well with Javelin Rockets, because long range shots have higher aim penalties than medium range shots.
Even if you had high aim and carried a rifle, there are quite many situations where you want to control/suppress an enemy rather than fire at it. Suppression offers enough compelling alternative to FIH, imo.
Yes, I know how salvo works, I used it in vanilla to do things like blow up cover then shoot. I get it. It wasn't bad (although after I experimented, I finally always picked hail of bullets in vanilla to assassinate codexes with bluescreen rounds).With a pure Rocket technical, salvo comes into its own. On any given activation, you can take the shot from wherever you happen to be and then move into cover or take another shot (with your Rifle, because you aren't carrying a rubbish SMG on your high aim technical). You don't have to worry about whether or not you've moved before you take the shot and you don't have to worry about whether you are in safe cover or not before you take the shot. Salvo (especially combined with Javelin Rockets) on timed missions makes Rocketeer much more useful. It's also not even that bad compared to the other choices on untimed missions.
With respect to LW2's technical, usually though, you have people on your team who capitalize much better on exposed targets like a serial sniper, or just a ranger. And I dunno, tact sense makes it look pretttty bad, but that's just imo. I guess I prefer my technical to do his job (expose cover with rockets, crowd control with fire) and don't get in the way (defense) in that order. Having him do damage with a rifle is somewhere ranked below those priorities for me.