It has good armor but poor firepower for its current battle rating, it just like a M4A3E2 Jumbo, 75 mm to be specific.
For instance it can’t penetrate consistently the Tiger II (H) on the front of the turret as most but not all tanks or any other vehicle at its battle rating change can. Neither counter a T34 Heavy Tank in the most of its weak spots.
T-44 First Model has only one thing in advantage compared to the T-44-122 — improved side upper armor with additional RHA plates.
A Soviet tank with a 6 second reload would actually be pretty nice and especially with the good mobility the T-44 (FM) has, at least then it would have something going for it - basically a somewhat armoured M18.
I don’t think there is any point in moving it down as Russia has no line up at 6.0, so it will have to be used at 6.3 anyway, or with 5.7 back up vehicles
Maybe because more than half the German players play like 80 years old men with legal blindness. You can’t even put a dent frontally into most heavies while even in the slightest uptier, you can get lolpenned almost anywhere. The T-44 FM is literally no different than a T-34-85 in its own capabilities and the BR-367 means jackshit when it’s barely different compared to the BR-365 (you lose angled performance in exchange for flat pen that never comes into play, because any armored part is either atleast 180mm thick or angled af). A Sherman does the same as a T-44 FM (and I’d argue even the T-34-85) literally better and it’s only 5.7 (atleast the absolute best version).
The FM will get easily penetrated frontally by 5.0 tanks through its driver port(86mm), mantlet and cupola.
The basic T-44 was balanced at 6.3 and the Vk can one-shot it by shooting the cupola if the mantlet checks would be such a hard target to hit.
I don’t think you realise how large the drivers port on the T-44 (FM) really is, the entire tank itself is a massive weak spot and most of the silhouette of the Panther is made up of the UFP which is pretty well armoured.