Profile of Vipper

Since grenades have nothing to do with the CD of barrage I will respond in this thread.

Easy to say when your favorite factions

Let try to avoid "favorite factions" comment, they are simply nonconstructive.

have nuke grenades as part of their core army

Its faction has certain things that stock that others factions do not.

Some times and mostly when these things are basic tools they might lead to disadvantage in some area. For instance WFA not having flamers or OKW/USF not snipers is a disadvantage.

HE Grenades don't really create any meaningful disadvantage.

while the Soviets do not even have any grenades available to them in half their doctrines.

Well that is technically incorrect since molotov are grenades and satchel can also work as grenades.

One could even argue that Ostheer/USF/UKF lack stock incendiary grenades.

As for how many doctrines do not have HE grenades that is 8 of 22 which closer to 1/3 than half.

Grenades are completely irrelevant to the Zis barrage ability even more so with CD of the barrage.

Imo there are number of changes that could help the unit:

1) Make the unit call in. The decision to make main battle tanks require building is fine but specialized units like hetzter/Ostwind/Kv-8 can remain call-in or being built from HQ.

That would allow different built orders.

2) Increase armor from 80. The unit has sort range and no turret and it can easily expose rear/side armor.

3) As will all flame weapon I suggest removing DOT from auto-fire and adding an ability that creates DOT.

4) Increase acceleration to 2+ this not a heavy tank

That's not how it works...

Well I remembered incorrectly it is the SU-76 barrage that kill model when vet 2.

The damage profiles are in post #12 (if I have not missed anything)

April 24th, 2014
-both ATGs got equal buff, in fact, PaK got greater one
December 19th, 2017
-Barrage nerf and cost decrease

Number of shell 6 for 60 mu (10 per shot)
Number of shell 4 for 35 mu (8.75 per shot)

this is overall of buff since in most cases 6 shell where not need and even if they are need one can use 2 barrages instead and have 2 extra shell for 10 mu.

September 2019
-Further barrage adjustments, decreasing OHK potential, increasing reliability to do any damage

"ZiS-3 and SU-76 76mm HE Barrage

The barrage ability on the ZiS-3 and SU-76 has been changed to have reduced raw killing power and deal more reliable health damage instead.

HE Barrage AOE damage from 1/0.15/0.125 to 1/0.375/0.125
HE Barrage AOE distance from 1.5/3/4.5 to 0/3/5"
This is a major buff with more than doubling mid damage and increasing the far aoe.
The change to near AOE distance would bring the uni in line with mortar but it still does full damage of 80 instead of 68 for the PM-41.

April 10, 2020
-Decrease of effectiveness of barrage vs heavy cover

this speaks for it self:

"ZiS-3/SU-76 Barrage
This change puts the barrage from ZiS-3 weapons inline with other direct-fire weapons and mortars that receive penalties when striking units in heavy cover.
Heavy cover damage modifier from 1 to 0.5"

No other changes to its firepower and barrage.
You were never supposed to facetank whole barrage.
Go eat a bratwurst.

Most point are false Zis barrage is far superior to what it used to be and it is cheaper. That is why the ability went from almost never used to, to frequently used.