Are you going to negate that most of the playerbase play mainly axis factions?
Automatch says otherwise. And it seems that it is constant in all ELO ranges, because everybody sees always around 70% axis players.
And a simple search in this forum shows that changes detrimental to axis factions generate much more outcry than changes detrimental to allies. Same applies to official and steam forums.
And about "immune to sound balance discussions", please don't make me remember when so many sacred cows from this very forum claimed that Tiger Ace was perfectly balanced.
No I don't negate, I simply don't know. The people I play with and against usually play all factions and whenever I hit the search game button the ratio fluctuates roughly around 50:50.
Considering the Tiger Ace, I don't recall any of the serious top players on this board defending it in it's original state.
On topic:
The E8 is a marvelous generalist tank, I don't know if it's op but a slight fuel cost increase should be bearable (say 5-10 fuel).