Good argument for partisans, but that changes nothing for irregulars really.
Back to guards-on a second thought, DPs could stay as they are, not having PTRS would be advantage enough. Not really sure what could be done to make them relevant as AT or stop them being weapon pinatas against infantry.
Now, for the doctrines, would it be possible for soviet defensive doctrine to make it so conscripts can also place light AI mines? Even without changes to the rest of the doctrine, it would greatly increase viability of it.
For partisans I would first try to leave them as they are, but get rid of their accuracy penalty, so they actually shoot bullets and not pea.
Also, try the thing with guards! No PTRS on spawn, buy-able PTRS OR DP-28s, increased effectiveness of both as they can't be combined anymore, button on DP-28s obviously, this is a change I would LOVE to experiment with.
I will never rate balance over 5 as long as there will be just 2-3 "to go" commanders and every other one remain not only not competitive, but trashy.
So 4 from me. Would be 5, but relic willingly is choosing to ignore underpowered and underused units and doctrines since forever and even if the patch was good, can't say the game is good.
Ostheer pioneers got nerfed too.... I don't know why they pios and enginners so much. They probaly want to make infantry fights a gren/conscript/rifle-only thing.
Ost pios were never supposed to have 100% moving accuracy, so it was a bugfix.
CEs on the other hand got a plain nerf.
Apparently conscripts are in such a deep shit that even CEs outperformed them.