Shit tier upgrade still, why would you neuter your anti infantry that you paid 290 for when you could just get an m42 lol.
Depends if you are using a commander with an M42, really. Admittedly those commanders are fairly meta, right? Unrelated, but are we expecting the Balance team to have a look at Canister Shot at any point? My understanding is that it's kinda useless.
I haven't had a chance to play the game since the patch hit, but I should imagine AT penals are fairly strong now, especially against light vehicles, where they're undeniably MUCH more reliable than Shrecks, PIATs, or Zooks, and I think (Dependent on the actual RoF of Shrecks vs PTRS) they might be guaranteed to kill many lights faster than Shrecks. Seralia doesnt seem to have been updated with the new statistics for the weapon, so when it does I think I'm going to try and do some calculations to see exactly how they stack up (On paper, obviously) vs other AT solutions.
I don't imagine they're anywhere near as good vs mediums/heavies as Shrecks or even Piats/zooks are, just because of their low penetration, even if they are guaranteed to do damage on every shot. Sort of nice (for soviet) that they're impossible to outrange by most AT tanks, incidentally... though this isnt really that big a deal in practice.
I'm also interested to see exactly what their DPS and general effectiveness vs infantry/tanks looks like post patch both with and without their upgrade. Their veterancy changes are guaranteed to have improved their sustained AT performance, but I don't know if its made them worse against infantry or not, I'm unsure how the accuracy -> RA conversion actually affects them in terms of AI duties.