Wow this thread sure degenerated into Germans UP and completely off topic with walls of text that have nothing to do with Panthers or T4.....
well they kind of do. the reason is that as a german player, you will never, never, never ever get to build a T4 in 1v1 with the exception that you were bossing your opponent around and decided to have a little lol with the brumbär.
soviets on the other hand will have their T4 up before 10-12 minutes and before 15 mins there will already be a hard counter to the panther in the su85 out.
i think that it really is relevant that the meta is shifting in that way. if soviet players largely play doctrine supertanks (IS2, ISU152, KV8, T85) and their only "natural" non-doctrinal counter is the panther (what if i picked a doctrine without a supertank?) it becomes important to me to be able to have a chance to put out that unit.
what i said before is more of a rage rant about that the most powerful tanks in the game also come with the two most powerful elite infantry units in the game - imo that situation doesn't lend itself to good, balanced gameplay.
i stopped playing germans and i'm winning left and right by just building 6-8-10 cons and maybe some guards here and there until i hit a supertank.