The thing is that sideshots bounce off from it on a regular basis. Flanking is part of the game. Useless on IS-2s.
And why do you repeat this? Its a common knowledge since alpha that there is NO side armor in CoH2, only front half and rear half. You want to flank successfully? Get on its rear as T34s have to do against Tigers and Elephants.
Bringing up the T-34/76 which is hardly supposed to fight versus tanks is stupid. T-34/85s - which are more or less in the role of a Panzer IV - will make short process of any Tiger.
In pairs, with mark target and possible guard button. That is hardly a 1v1 scenario nor Tiger should fight alone like, ever.
More so, German AT should deal with heavy tanks. After all Russian AT deals with German tanks easily. "Wehraboo" you call it, while you are just looking for Soviet sided balance. Why should German AT not go through IS-2s armor? After all Soviet AT units (Zis and Su-85 and even the T34/85) go through the Tiger, despite failing to do so historically. So no reason why German AT should struggle to take down Russian tanks.
And it does with the same or greater efficiency as allied AT deals with german heavies.
And no, russian AT doesn't deal easily with german armor, in every single case you need to use 2 to 1 numbers or combined arms.
And if you want historical accuracy, well, there you have it, IS-2 had superior armor to Tiger and inferior to King Tiger, which is accurately portrayed in the game.
Why the conviction that german AT should always penetrate and only german tanks should bounce shells off?
IS-2 is heaviest armor allies have, it doesn't have as much punch as Tiger, but can take slightly more punishment.
Its balanced this way.
I know its hard to accept the fact that allies might have something that isn't made of paper, but thats how it is and thats how it will stay.