I don't said fend it off with PAKs, I said it is unlikely that it will dive in fast and kill off a PAK in one fireburst. It is more realistic you will withdraw the PAK since KV-8 will get damaged too and has to withdraw by itself. The short range always comes at risk because of snares.
Indeed, you will have to move paks (and potentially heal them) like I said. This is really damaging since it opens up to infantry or vehicle pushes in a meta reliant on at guns, so if a KV-8 can flame your (ideally) mg42 and 2 paks and retreat behind its at before the stug can fire 2 shots, it has done its job already, and you hardly need to go in snare range (30 m is not 10)
Sure, with a snare you can use at guns at distance to punish it of course, but that opens a can of worms because the last thing you want to do is use grenadiers to engage enemy infantry at < 30 m from that KV-8
Even if an infantry push keeps the at gun away from the flame projector, you are gonna bleed a lot and not trade efficiently in damage against the KV-8
As you said there are counters and yes a KV-8/ZiS combo puts a lot of pressure on Ostheer.
Glad we agree
To be honest it better has to put pressure on Ostheer because once Ostheer reaches T4 the ZIS/KV-8 combo will quickly turn into a dead end if you didn't manage to push your opponent back far enough.
Glad we also agree that Ostheer best chance at countering KV-8 is Tier 4. I don't see how KV-8 + Zis can be a dead end against Tier 4 tho. It sure helps having a vehicle that can endure a few shots and be sure to penetrate KV-8 (Panther), but Zis and KV-8 themselves don't lose their effectiveness as at gun and high hp meatshield with DOT against infantry/weapon crews that can force MG and at gun repositioning, which makes it a vital tool in late game VP stand offs
No, but it is quite a bit stronger, especially versus moving infantry. A single squad of PZGrens or Panzerfusiliers can deal quite a bit of damage to KV-8 with its double shrek if you keep moving it while reloading the Shreks. Stop between KV-8 fireburst to shoot. That is pretty impossible versus Brummbar or 105mm Dozer.
Yeah, like I said, Brummbar as higher damage potential, but a flamethrower advantage is being able to force off several weapon crews by the time a brummbar could fire 2 shots, and especially be GRANTED that the weapon crews is going to have to relocate
I don't see at infantry countering a KV-8 unless it's left really unsupported tho, or at least I wouldn't try. Maybe it works, I really don't know. For how slow it can be, I doubt that you can actually punish it this way, and unless it's left unsupported your grenadiers are going to have an issue when supporting shrecks if they need to face shocks or cons
I understand your point. But how should it be done without changing Soviet tech? The only thing that would make sense and change something without screwing teamgame timing would be to give it even more AI damage but nerf AT performance by quite a bit. That way you could flank/kill ZIS with a PZIV (and maybe mortar smoke support) without having to worry about KV-8.
It could be made to require an extra ad hoc Tier 4 side tech upgrade.
Actually I thought of this originally for the OKW Panzer 4 in Tier 3 for Ostheer, similar to how the Soviets can pay extra fuel to unlock 7 men at Tier 3.