historically the pershing was a glass canon, that's why they made the super pershing.
It should have a scary gun but Panther armor and survivability
As a player that plays USF and OKW most, Pershing has Panther level survivability (a tiny bit more for the price), and a gun that doesn't scare anyone away. With OKW I prefer combined arms around KT (I only play 3v3 or 4v4, seldom 2v2), and with USF, either the Easy Eight combo or Pershing combined arms. Before the patch, Pershing combined arms was functioning properly mainly because of the scary AI gun on Pershing, but now, it's ground to dust. Ranger and rifle squad with full zooks is still good for tank ambushes (even though the rifle snare is pretty bouncy on higher end armour), or Jackson behind Pershing and one AT gun combined with rifle BARs. Right now, Pershing can not deal with any blob at any range. I've seen hits on 5 gren blob really really close together... 1 model killed, 2 squads lost about 40% of hp (I won the game cause blobs are easy to counter). Also, I've noticed that I'm having a hard time killing brumbar. I always do combined arms and I had a following scenario:
I was fighting OST as USF late game (won early and mid game but 2x OKW won vs 2x Brits on the mid and top part of the Whiteball map), so they turned around the 450-150 to 100-150 for them and then it was 0-150. The OST player was OK (rank 16). He used Brummbar and Tiger combined with PAK and infantry. I used Pershing, Jackson and ATs combined with infantry support. Brummbar would nose-dive the Jackson which would penetrate the brummbar, ATs on flank positions would bounce 3/4. Brum would def kill 2-3 models in one shot on my AT (even though they were on flanking positions behind cover). I'd use the zooks and infantry with bars to flank the enemy but the MG42s on gren blob would easily dispatch any infantry and the OST would easily and slowly walk in with Tiger and brumbar due to the big armour/hp. I lost the game even though I was winning for 30/45 minutes. Once the heavy tanks started rolling out, and the OST is not braindead to not combine the forces and slowly push, you are done for. Of course, the Pershing was with the infantry flank on combined forces buff trying to flank the tiger and brummbar push (bottom side of Whiteball express) and with 5 shots taken, it still didn't manage to kill or wipe any squad of the big blob. Pershing is underpowered right now. I did make minor mistakes around the 30 minute mark. My game was far from perfect but I didn't not make one major mistake or lose field presence for more than 30 seconds throughout the game... but the enemy made much bigger mistakes throughout the game, which were easily bypassed/forgiven once the Brumbar was supported with anti tanks (and later Tiger) with it's big hp/armour. I have around 900+ hours in COH2, 700 of which are standard custom games with people on Automatch maps (basically automatch without the ranked part), and I have to say that Axis feels much easier to play. In about 300 hours of OKW and 600 of USF (some minor hours in OST and Brits)... I have to say that the risk is lowest and reward-highest playing with OKW. Pershing, with it's low HP/armour for a 630/230 tank and a (now) mediocre gun, is no longer worth the price. The good thing about the Heavy Calv commander is the offmap smoke to help with pushing/hide troops from flyby planes and the sandbags on riflemans. The combined arms is expensive with a large cooldown. Rangers will always be a good choice even though they are expensive and Pershing is expensive while bringing nothing exceptional to the table.