To have counters does not make a faction weak, but how easily they are accesible.
If you spent 20+ min building an army that the other players can wreck within 1 minute shows cheese, if it is undeniably going to loose, then its weak.
If my understanding of the unit is correct, to remove pfausts from FSJ is a bad move, because:
OKM infantry is analog to OST armor, overall good and costly enough, not really cost efficient, but effective.But the downside of such generalist design is enemy variety, because cheaper and/or specialized units can and will harass a stronger axis units in specific scenarios other than plain combat (cost efficiency, versatility, scaling) and usually axis units have a finite powerspike, faster games favour allied, stalled games favour axis, generally speaking.
FSJ is as it is now (it can be changed though) is an elite doctrinal mainline infantry, projected from the volks design and not an elite AI specialist, therefore the presence of pfausts. Volks after upgrade are effective at all ranges, so are FSJ, volks have snare to be used as a part of a combined assault, so are FSJ, both have grenades but FSJ have better abilities because of their higher price (compared to volks or obers) and have camo because their original role was ambush (it is a bit redundant now TBH)
Instead of loosing pfaust, remove camo, but instead of removing camo or pfausts IMO FSJ should get an explosive satchel or the bundled grenade to stun vehicles, simply that.
Well for what it's worth I'd make the MG42 320 MP and in T1. Strumpioneers would also be T1 like Royal Engineers.
The title says "Are bren blob buffs justified?"
If vickers loose the +20% acc but get instead +30% suppression it could mimic the OST early game design, well placed troops, team weapons to secure and mobilize
TBH i would love some penal revamp, into a less cheesy infantry design, but the damage is already done, all other infantries got overbuffed and redesigned instead.
I would agree to lock satchel with molo or even better, unlock molos and make them free and make the same tech unlock both AT satchel (when upgraded) and explosive satchel