I disagree on your point about USF losing flexibility due to teching nades. It gives you smoke + grenades, that makes your rifles alot more flexible depending on the situation. I know you meant faction, but rifles are a big part of it.
The other thing is, don't play your opponents game, if he jumps in a building and you keep attacking it and fail at countering, then you are doing it wrong. Make yourself unpredictable, do things that make him question if keeping 1 necessary unit in a building or not. I have a replay on Semoskiy, where my opponent wires my bridge and puts an mg in the building, I just put my focus on him catching me, eventually getting the cutoff point back.
It's a really good commander still, echelons suite with flamers so much more than rifles did. You have a really good sherman and when you flank, use the white phosphorus rounds to basically make enemy crumble.