The Mandalorian Season 2

[Wraith]

While I am generally on the side that the stormtroopers' poor reputation is undeserved, I fell this is swinging the pendulum the other way too far. In this scene the 'troopers get stuck at the door for a long while unable to shoot their opponents down even though most of them have no cover whatsoever and R2 and 3PO can just waltz through the fireline just fine. When they do get through they've had some losses and they suffer another one when they capture Leia. This scene shows them as competent soldiers not nigh-unstoppable killing machines.

That's fair, I admit I probably exaggerated for narrative/comedic effect. I think you get my point though - in The Mandalorian there is a clear escalation in the quality of troopers, and it's subtly explained by their situation from rag-tag Outer Rim dregs with The Client, to drilled veterans under Gideon, to Death Troopers later.

There are "bad storm troopers" and they get sent off to guard dirt-farms on the edge of the galaxy where all that's needed is an Imperial flag and someone to keep the lights on, whereas "normal" Storm Troopers are competent and dangerous, if fallibly human. I think that the episodic show makes this a lot clearer than the movies who, despite their woefully padded run-time, don't have as much opportunity to characterise its mooks while there's Protagonists still in need of a few more seconds of time to complain about something and then trip over a plot-device.