I too love this tank and rebought it during the +1/-1 mm time period because its one of those tanks that suffers greatly when facing 2 tier up. I personally think its a very underrated tank and can absolutely fight above its tier (tier 7 basically, not so much 8, can dominate its own tier. BUT, the tank suffers in 3 areas big time, only 2 of which are actually the tanks fault.
1 - its as slow as a glacier (tank's fault)
2 - it can't really compete at tier 8 b/c of #1...its just a sitting duck when the armor is no longer effective
3 - its very team dependent. If your team can hang around and not evaporate in 33 seconds...this tank can shine. If you team vanishes quick, you can still hang tough but its hard unless you are in among the buildings and dead tanks and then, sometimes, you can pull off miracles of bounce goodness while dealing death back. But any half competent medium can get your butt and you are toast.