You are missing the point. Germans have to go Elefant to not lose. All I saw in that video were horribly microed T-34/85s rushing over the river and getting stuck. And god forbid that the Elefant beats the ISU! The ISU only has superb anti infantry capabilities while also being good versus armor, while the Elefant only excels at anti-tank, guess who should win.
The problem is if the Germans don´t go for Elefant, they usually have lost. And that´s super boring. There are people who play for fun, not to win. And going Elefant every game isn´t fun.
You´re right. Without an Elefant you will have a really tough time vs ISU. The problem is that you cannot exploit the weakness of the Elefant (= infantry) because there is no Soviet infantry with strong enough AT capabilities to take it out. The Elefant lets you dominate all armor, thus your Ostwind or whatever can kill all inf without worrying about tanks.