meuropean tf2 still seems to have this "roamer is the backup pocket" mentality where every time i see a roamer hes 5 feet from the pocket whos 5 feet from the medic
gunboats frees up heals, which is something you completely ignored.
No, not at all.
Don´t quote a tl;dr and then complain about something not being mentioned. ;-)
Imho the roamer should be on the flank, unless he´s getting a buff atm or you planned a double soldier bomb for the next push.
Of course he needs a bit less heals, which is quite handy in team fights and on the midfight, but it´s not that much of a difference at all other points in time.
manybody who says theyd rather only bomb with +40 hp and no shotgun is quite silly
but the idea that soldiers run gunboats when theyre planning on only going for plays or suiciding 24/7 is pretty dumb too
when you have gunboats you can rj multiple times when youre below 50 hp and do damage with 2/3 rockets to the enemy, you dont have to die
I haven´t said anything about 24/7 suiciding. Gunboats just give roamers the ability to bomb in and jump out or to bomb in places that are usually to far away because of the amount of jumps required.
If your scout(s) are playing a bit more passive, so you rarely need the shotgun as finisher, then you can equip gunboats for convenience (heals, more rjs). With gunboats you can jump in and out easier (i called this bombing, this is already considered pretty aggressive in europe) OR go for a suicide play on a medic far back. Considering that your scouts are playing rather passive, there´s no reason not to go for these plays.
Contrary if your scout(s) are playing aggressive you have to hold the flank and probably need the additional firepower of the shotgun, while you are a bit closer to your medic (depending on the map) so you can get heals/buffs easily, which negates the advantage of gunboats.
And of course, like #20 said, it´s depending on the map. Running gunboats all the time EXCEPT for the midfight (unless your roamer wants do to a shitload of jumps on the midfight) is a good idea for open maps (e.g. process) where the flank is miles away from the medic, so buffs wouldn´t last until the roamer is back on the flank (rjs/walking time) and the roamer would just waste time by going back to the medic. On smaller maps (e.g. gullywash) shotgun is superior most of the times. Although we like to suicide our roamer on the combo in gullywash midfights, if our demo does the rollout via choke, so the combo takes too much damage to stay in the fight or just gets killed. After that our roamer runs shotgun pretty much all the time.
This is just a rule of thumb, figuring out when exactly to run gunboats or shotgun is pretty hard, it depends on the map AND the team/the teams playstyle/your playstyle.