SU-101 Underwhelming af?

So, i've been enjoying the t6 and t7 for the 268 4 line. The su-100 had a 390alpha gun at t6. Spammed prammo like there's no tomorrow. Was really fun and felt bad for the enemies, especially when facing tier 4. At some point i even one-shotted a Hetzer. Then along comes the SU-100M1. What an absolute blast. What a beast. 250alpha, 250pen on prammo, and the armor worked almost no matter what.

… and then you jump to tier 8. BOY do i hate my life… I said to myself "it'll get better once i get the second gun as that one has some pen on it" – it didn't. Again motivated myself by saying "fine, the 2nd gun is also crap unless u spam prammo, ill get the third as that one has 390 alpha despite crap pen at t8 and it will get better" – it didn't.

The armor feels SO MUCH worse, and since you can't go up against heavies like i used to do in the 100M1, you're left either trying to squeeze in between the heavies to get even a bit of damage before you either lose 3-15, or win 15-3, OR you try to go with the non-camping mediums, but end up getting penned by every single prammo from the 2938472938 premiums (seriously, one game i thought i was the only tech-tree on both teams in there). Last choice is to camp a random bush/redline, but the terrible dispersion values on all the guns make that an even worse choice.

The game categorizes it as "Versatile" but it's anything BUT versatile. All you have is a bit of speed and a quite decent top gun. Which, requires about 150k exp to unlock from stock.

So i'm left wondering:

Am i just terrible at playing the SU-101 on every map on every position i've tried or is this tank just horrible and in need of some love?

And for reference, i've had a SU-100M1 game with 3.8k dmg, 2.5k blocked (which got me an Ace Tanker as well). Out of 29 games with it, i got 55% WR, 1k avg dmg and 1 kill/game.

Pushing the 101 to the limit, in 34 games, i'm sitting at 35% WR and i've managed to get barely half a kill per game, at an avg of 800 dmg.

Edit: I've obviously always angled it a bit to either sidescrape or downright hide the LFP. Any position where a hull-down heavy could use, i try to abuse it.