Late Game w/o a Tiger

Currently getting into COH2 multiplayer (have a lot of vCOH experience) and have been doing well early/mid game (mainly team games) only to run into a wall once the Allies players define a battle line.

I am getting ground down by mortars and arty and if I try to push forward I get annihilated by a blob and AT. These are my observations:

LMGs have to be static so they aren't good rushing in
pIVs don't have the armour to be effective for more then a shot or two
panthers don't have the AI and get ruined if hit by one AT nade

Without a tiger, how do you counter this?

Well it is going to be quite hard without a proper breakthrough tank. The way I see it you have two options;
T4: An extended T1/T2 play with a sniper pgrens (shrecks later on) halftrack and 2 pak40 into a brummbar. Brummbar is very effective at clearing atguns (use attackground!) and can take more hits than a p4. It's 40 range means you have to back up early on but you should be able to clear 1 atgun at the time. German sniper is great agains support weapons and should be easier to keep alive on teamgames, pak40 is the best AT in the game and will make short work of any tank besides isu. A panther next I guess, im not a fan of the panther with it bad accuracy but you will want some mobile AT otherwise artillery will make your life miserable. Panzerwerfer later on if they blob their support weapons hard.

You go Close air support/luftwaffe/ostruppen and stay in t2 forever with fuel conversion into all the strafes/shrecks/stukas you want. This wont really work against players who know what they're doing though

But if you just want to keep playing the way you do now with small tweaks I would suggest mixing ina german sniper. the amount of fire going on in teamgames means there is plenty of cover to stay hidden forever and sov teams wont ever get him

My favorite late game choice for 2v2 is going for arty doctrines the LeFH-18, there are about 3 commanders that I can think of that provide LeFH-18 the Festung support doctrine using it a lot due to relief infantry, it gives a mortar halftrack always usefull, just get a scout car or halftrack to vet 1 and use tracking it reveals units on the minimap so you can prepare the arty vs an incoming blob or just barrage static positions

Joint Operations also gives you the Pack43 and flight recon you can use that to spot for your arty but is DLC, doesn't really matter to me because I pre ordered coh2 so I got the first DLC commanders included.

Mechanized support not sure about the name gives 250 halftrack with lmg gren, spotting scopes so you can spot the mg, AT gun wall without them knowing and barrage more accurately.

You go for T1 T2 and T3 followed by a much later Tier 4 only use your tier 3 tanks defensively, remember this is a Team game so you have to rely on your ally to bring out the heavy stuff you are the support, if there is a lot arty on opponents side just use LeFH-18 vet 1 counter-barrage and later go tier 4 for panzerwerfer to keep the barrage on blobs and support weapons, and get the more durable (than p4) panther if you can

If you want to win without any heavies at all, well then you are denying yourself the late game strength that Axis provides, in 1v1 arty doctrines not that reliable

Hope this helped in anyway

Speaking only of 1v1/2v2 here, seeing as you referenced teamgames, especially the latter.

Right away, it might not be what you want to hear, and I'll readily admit its not helpful either, but against competent opposition in the current meta you absolutely NEED a Tiger as Wehr or you won't get anywhere. If you can't provide it, your partner should.
Some of the workarounds that have been proposed here might be somewhat helpful, but they will only compensate for so long. The two biggest strengths of the Tiger are survivability and versatility, and that is something no other unit in the Wehr arsenal provides remotely to such a degree. Once you meet opponents on your skillevel when playing Axis you will usually find yourself on the backfoot throughout the early/midgame - the Tiger is typically the (only) unit that will enable you to act offensively eventually - if you don't have it, you have a serious problem.

In imo at the begining of the game you should rush the deffensive position of the enemy, don't worry about capturing and just hold for a while with 2mg's and a bit of AT.Then get a squad to capture the points and wait till you can gat the tiger.They will bomb you to hell but you will have your line behind all your deffences.You will move units from time to time and just hold.You will command points quickly and you'l have plenty of fuel.You get the tiger some unf. and after sheling them with something break throu.Haras them a bit and kind be a roming army.This will frihten them into their base and soon you will hold the whole map.