I find that Grens with LMGs handily beat Shocks for cost over the long term in a war of attrition. Shocks cost almost as much as 2 Grens. Sure 2 sets of LMG42s are very expensive, but it's a one time fee in contrast to the constant man power drain of reinforcements.
HMG42s were overnerfed. If they buff HMG42s back a bit, then lmg42s may be toned down. Pretty much every top German player now is going pure Gren spam now.
+1
link0 knows what he is talking about, can't say the same for some people
Basically, what I'm trying to say is, Germans are already a munition starved faction, if your opponent is going fast mg-42s you should be happy, just avoid that one squad unless you can hit it in force, take his cut-offs and camp buildings like there is no tomorrow. Then laugh as your t-34s come and shit all over his grens.
That is true on some maps if your cutoff has a building next to it. But if you just let him sit on your cutoff then you will be really far behind in the teching war. And you can't just play a slow paced backtech for "combined arms" approach like you could do in vcoh because you will get owned by 5-6 minute FHT/AC