I was having mad fun as an Engineer with the Jump Boots and a Fat Boi launcher, ribbing at my frequent duo-mining buddy the Scout that he's just been made redundant because I can now reach very high ground relatively quickly (platform, boots, a little rest, platform, boots, etc) and I can light the ceiling with a nuke in a pinch, not to mention annihilate swarms like it was my main job. I guess there was some truth to that.
I'm actually glad the boots got removed. Sure, they were fun as hell to use, but that was one active slot locked down into the comfort zone, preventing me from experimentation and optimizing builds: builds that might seem unfun on paper, but would help me to overcome the kinds of challenges that have been giving me and my buddy a hard time returning to hazard4 after a break from our main classes.
Jump Boots was a major self-reliance perk. That's good for the individual, but bad for the team, encouraging the kind of lone wolf behaviour that grabbing enemies and cave leeches have been put into place to dissuade from.
We have now been given the stick, and some of us have learned our lesson.
Devs, if you're reading this: when are we getting more carrots?
I feel we need more meaningful perks that help us buff and save our friends, like Field Medic, to encourage team play and mini-roles within a team. I wish there was enough different "buddy-buff perks" for the whole team, so that instead of everyone running "that one good buff perk" we'd have teams asking questions like "Hey is anyone running Karl's Bastion?" (you know, that active perk that turns Molly into a Thumper that repels bugs) or "Hey next one's an Elimination. Should we try to take two Keep Firing! perks (that active that allows you to increase everyone's reload speed for a while) instead of a Field Medic on this run?"
PS. Please don't massacre my Boi. It's the reason Engineers get up in the morning to solve practical problems.