After about a 100 games of onslaught/ranked, I think I figured out the kran nerf.

Cliff notes: the vz is the new kran.

I was one of the early adopters of the kran after it got the buff from 4×400 to 3×440 with a super fast reload, ran it a lot for several seasons of ranked. I run bond vstab/turbo/aiming with the mobility field mods.

Anyway, verdict of the kran is that:

• Surprisingly, it's a lot slower on many maps due to big downhill sections near the spawn that helped you get into position early like on el halluf, karelia, etc.
• The reload speed nerf is more painful than I expected. A lot of times you'd feel like you were missing out on damage.
• The gun handling doesn't feel terrible at all until you get out to mid-long ranges,

Anyway, the end result is that the VZ is now stronger than the kran. 2×490, actually fast, much better gun handling, and you can hit reload whenever you get a breather and it doesn't take forever.

edit- also, the VZ's special ability feels stronger than the kran's since it usually chops a huge amount off the reload time.