Profile of rofltehcat

I think in one of the last balance casts, PQ (or was it someone else?) said that they weren't completely happy with snipers so maybe there will be changes. But maybe I just dreamed that

Overall, I think the use of snipers has already increased and now that the Soviet ones have the same rate of countersniping/MP drain, it isn't countered that easily. The camo is good but you need to move every 1-2 steps or else a precision mortar strike will ruin your day.
The low HP without a second model is extremely weak to AoE damage and giving him 2 armor doesn't offset that because armor only works vs. small arms and because it is random, which means that sometimes he takes several shots without any damage and sometimes he just dies instantly. But people have been saying for ages that 40 hp simply isn't enough.

They probably just forgot the rear MG in some nerf.

5% to get the heavy critical, 95% to get the light critical.

"random_actions": [
                                {
                                    "actions": [
                                        {
                                            "$REF": "action\\trigger_critical_action.lua",
                                            "critical": "vehicle_damage_engine",
                                            "remove_at_health": 1
                                        }
                                    ],
                                    "weight": 95
                                },
                                {
                                    "actions": [
                                        {
                                            "$REF": "action\\trigger_critical_action.lua",
                                            "critical": "vehicle_destroy_engine",
                                            "remove_at_health": 1
                                        }
                                    ],
                                    "weight": 5
                                }

I'd say it is certainly a shock unit and also designed to be one, M3 flamer being intentional and T1 having less staying power/poor AT.
However, it being a shock unit doesn't mean that it needs to roam around the map roasting everything as it once did. But if all they do is a slight armor buff then that probably won't be a huge problem.

The current meta really doesn't benefit it: There are many more Grenadiers (or even Osttruppen) around than there used to be, fewer targets (MG42, mortar, sniper) and some conditions were changed.

I think it is still a useful unit but its role has shifted. Now it is more about using it as a vehicle like the 221 to scout and harass infantry rather than only using it for (back then too strong) shock purposes. If there is an opening it certainly can still do a lot of shock damage (e.g. flank unguarded MG42).
And it certainly is no longer the "always get THIS" unit. It used to be the single best option to go T1->T4 (partly due to T2->T3 weakness).

Horrible how? You mean to tell me that if a T70 gets that lucky kill on the PG carrying the panzershreck, you wouldn't like to get the chance to be able to pick up his weapon? Instead you want to have to wait to get 3 kills or kill the whole squad to get a chance for that weapon drop?

Horrible as in: Those weapons are very expensive and it offers nothing to the game while having the potential to heavily unbalance it, inspiring people to forego existing and working game dynamics and even damage the core of the game.
The current system has some randomness in it, especially with explosions but also limits randomness and lets you avoid the weapon drop by simply retreating on time (slight skill component). Your system on the other hand is based purely on random chance, not only for explosion weapons but also for small arms deciding to shoot some soldiers over others.
The only skill component your system would have is a test of who of the two players can click all the weapons dropping everywhere the fastest. Some would call this "micro" (the worst kind of "micro"), I'll just call this whack-a-mole. This will also deincentivize the use of cover, positioning and support weapons just so you have a better chance of grabbing the weapon.

And of course there is cost. This idea would require a massive cost decrease to reflect the increased risk as well as to make repurchasing the weapons possible. This change alone would completely overthrow balance and dumb the game down because people will either use even less mines etc. to prevent the enemy completely snowballing them with captured weapons vs. squads who lost their weapons but can't repurchase them whereas the other player can easily snowball into squads upgraded both with captured weapons and upgrades, defeat more units (potentially leading to even more weapon drops) and capture the map (leading to even more munitions for the snowballing side).

It can be an interesting thought and maybe it might work for another game, but for CoH2 you could as well just suggest that support weapon crews turn into a useless "weapon crew squad" and need to manually recapture their weapon every time the gunner gets killed. It would lead to the same mix of destructive whack-a-mole gameplay.