I agree with OP. And I'm pretty sure a good portions of this forum along with pretty much a lot of the competitive community will as well.
Before I say anything else, Dave you do realize that in the recent ESL open they forbid that doctrine on the grounds of it being unfair right? You can compare Strafe to the 85 if you want, both do different things thus making it completely incomparable. If you want to compare anything, then do it with the Russian CP-6 Strafe.
The German strafe costs 120 muni (which is made easier to achieve thanks to Opel) and you get it at CP-3, lasts for roughly 50 seconds to 1 minute meaning in that time period Soviet infantry unless in buildings are completely and utterly unusable, and as it stands you have trouble retreating due to a known bug (just another reason to do something about it faster).
It doesn't need to be targeted as it roams and doesn't act as a patrol unit so you can throw it virtually anywhere and it will do it's thing.
As well as suppressing and eventually pinning troops (retreating or not) it also deals fairly heavy damage to them (as Relic felt that a global pinning attack wasn't enough).
Now let's take a little look at the Soviet strafe.
You get it at CP-6 (that's right SIX) it costs 200 muni and is a targeted ability which usually hits roughly twice. It gives the German army a nice notice with it's smoke to say "retreat now and you're safe". It doesn't chase you, it doesn't pin you on retreat and more over it doesn't last for nearly a minute.
That tournament is also 1v1...the OP is talking about 2v2s so your comment about ESL is really irrelevant as the balance between 1v1 and 2v2 can't be compared.
I also said that strafe is OP, but it's not nearly the most pressing thing to fix in this game. Not even top 5 if you throw in lack of leaderboards, various debilitating bugs, crashes, and chat
Also the russian strafe does a shit ton more damage against soft and light armored targets. Does it roam the skies for a period of time? No. There has to be a trade off somewhere.