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Big travel is disruptive in a few ways. Mostly the problem isn't the potential travel, but the geometry used to enable it. Normally downhill bikes have super slack head tubes. This makes them stable at speed but handle like they are a mile long. They also regularly have longer chainstays which are great for stability, but take all the fun out of a frame. Then there is the shock tuning. The goal of ANY suspension is to use it ALL at least a couple times EVERY time you ride. In order to get a long travel bike to actually use the suspension you have to make it uber soft...in particular for our trails. Once you do this, you will find that with every pedal stroke-even worse for you since you are strong and mash-that the whole suspension will load and unload. This is a horrible waste of energy and feels ridiculous. Right now it doesn't bug you, but it will. I get that you think you like pedaling on a slack, super long, cool ass big suspension bike now...and for that reason you should get one, I just want to make sure you do it used so that after you go nuts and realize it isn't right you can flip it and get what is. The other option is to explain what you are feeling and see if you get it now to avoid that step. The suspension loading on the Enduro's is WAY, WAY more pronounced than the bounce on a fat tire. Fat tires have many disadvantages though, but one MONSTER advantage and that is confidence. You can literally just ride it into shit and it will go over it. It will make you a more capable rider faster than anything else, but at the cost of you won't truly learn you will just be able to do. That being said if you are just starting off jumping and going over stuff that confidence is huge. On that, generally speaking rear suspension has no influence on what you can go over or not. That is all your body position. Front can help, but also hurt. Another generality with some riding competence you will be faster on a hard tail without front suspension in 99% of MN riding...I know you don't care about that, but wanted to point it out. The other question is fun. For me fun is directly correlated with weight. It is a false correlation, but my confidence in clearing things goes up logarithmically as the weight goes down. My old BMX bike weighed in at a hair under 13lbs. I could bunny hop that thing a mile high. Broke a ton of shit on it though...

Hmmm, I posted this hours ago...I thought. If you ride this stuff, get the Enduro otherwise I wouldn't. It is only 2 hours away