It never used to be like that, it used to be the case where, if you missed, you gained nothing. That was a QoL thing in order to help in dungeons.

As for why it can only be used in combat, the yare trying to stray away from people pre prepping themselves for long periods of time before a fight can start. If you could PB outside of combat, you could ready a Phantom Rush and in doing so, your party not has to wait 80 seconds for both charges to come off of cooldown.

So no, it isn't getting changed.