I dunno how you missed it but before this patch, pioneer and pgren blobs could indeed ignore cover and run across the field, get on top of soviet inf who stayed in cover but still got cut down by those vicious mp40s,mp44s.
Personally, I am loving this patch and am playing germans more than I ever did before because while they do have some great advantages over soviets, (and still are the stronger faction imo) they now have some downsides as well so winning with germans is a lot more satisfying this patch than in the last two patches and so is winning with soviets which is a sign that things are pretty well balanced now
edit:- shermans btw do seem a bit too good against both inf and armor and they accelerate really fast but ofc relic will probably only nerf them after the western front expansion comes out
germans have no downsides, besides housing a lot of terrible players. the game is far worse than before the patch, just like i predicted, because the rectifying of basic systems is slowly uncovering how retardedly bad the soviet faction has been slapped together by relic. i doubt that much of time pre-THQ-bancruptcy went into them, and they don't belong into a CoH game as is.
fortunately(?) we're getting the americans back, so maybe then we can finally start playing the game?