one thing that might make the game feel better is handling mid air attacks differently, perhaps x has a shot that sends you down and z has the shot that acts like a double jump, but both have no windup animations
Did you have any issues with the delayed double jump in places other than boss fights? Maybe the bosses need to be changed a bit to compensate for Winston's double jump?
well some parts of the game would benefit from a quicker winston, in the first levels it doesn't seem too bad but in the later levels there are quite a few parts where you just want winston to hurry up already and stop having such a long shooting animation