I see you all wanted to have players using more than just speed paint.

I think you can solve the problem by taking a page out of Krunker's playbook. It would be a big change to flow, but I think it would allow more variety of playstyle and paint use.

Krunker treats each weapon as a separate class, with different innate stats for the player.

LMG is slower and has more weight, but can gain bhop speed faster due to being able to descend sooner and faster, allowing more momentum gain from more hops / meter. With a skilled player, very erratic bhop patterns can be made from changing directions quickly.

SMG moves faster and has wall jumping. The class tends to have longer, more exaggerated bhops and be able to slide further due to more momentum.

Plenty other classes fall between those extremes, but have heath qty and damage balancing.

Shotgun and rockets are both fairly weak, but have ability to rocket boost off surfaces and walls to gain more speed to close the gap.

Krunker also has some secondaries that allow for more movement. There a side mini-shotgun that you can rocket boost with. There's a slow cooldown compressor that can shoot you forward quickly. There's a boulder that you can't do anything with, but it weighs you down more, so you can bhop more like LMG while using it to change your bhop rhytm on a dime.

Perhaps LMG could operate in a similar way? Maybe explosive SMG & shotty have rocket boosting, mixed with other nerfs? Maybehaps some secondaries for movement in similar ways if people want to replace hammer?

People could pick paint grenades that compensate for their class's weakness. Lightweight classes could choose between extra fast, or being able to damage mechs better while still being faster than most. Paints may need a rebalancing with these changes too if you don't want the lightweight classes getting too out of hand.

-someone with way too many hours as a hyperspeed Krunker shotgun player