Are you joking? Do you have any idea how strong heavy tanks were a few years ago? Have you played Tiger ace when it came out? They were not game breakers, they were session enders and made people ragequit. One single Tiger ALONE, without any support whatsoever, could clean up an entire game. There was a tourney game where I think Luvnest lost every unit except for one or two pioneers, and still won because he had Tiger ace.
Even if you would buff the flamehetzer, the rest of the doctrine would still be ass and forbid any use in a competitive scenario. It's a classic meme doctrine. It has too obvious weakspots, is too obviously countered by almost any meta build.
Pretty much every ability in the doctrine would have to be replaced/buffed in order to be useful, sans Opel.
The KV-8 used to be bugged, which made it have 2 flamethrowers. Each flamethrower was also much much more effective than they are now. Then it was super overpowered and pretty much an instant win whenever it was called in.
Now however, it is rarely seen, despite being in a considerably better spot than Hetzer, which only reinforces the trashy-ness of the Hetzer, never being spotted at all.
Sorry but you are spewing too much BS.
Heavies had been strong, but you don't need to go back to 2013. They had moments on which they were strong and weak (which was the case before the latest changes to heavies).
Not all metas, specially teamgames and 2v2, revolved around the normal heavies (Tiger/IS2/Pershing). In the case of 3v3+ they were the exception more than the norm.
You are confused with the Crocodile and it's not a matter of it been bugged, but that flamethrower performance was been normalised and a way to double up the damage of heavier vehicles they got an "invisible" weapon to do the job.
More on this:
https://www.coh2.org/topic/36347/cruzz-s-the-more-you-know/post/496033
All this discussion on the Hetzer reminds me of old FHQ commander. Good at one thing, on specific mode and map and plays more like cheese than anything else.