Did you not replace the boots because you liked them or was it because there was not an viable replacement until Salvage? The first is player choice and the second means that there were 68 levels of dead/unusable foot gear.

What I would like to see is something like the following for footwear:

3 basic footgear paths for each class:
  1. Standard path with secondary stats as we have them now.
  2. Fleet movement path which enhances movement speed. They might also boost the chance of dodging.
  3. Traction path that reduces how much you get knocked back and forced movement. This path might also have greater vitality and or defensive secondary stats.

Each path would have multiple occurrences at different ilevels. (i.e. when best standard might be i130, best fleet would be i115 and best traction might be i125, but there would we lower level version available)