Why is Hetzer a thing?

I mean, he does somewhere between 250-300 damage, and is only tier 4. It's super frustrating to be leveling up a tech tree and ALWAYS find a Hetzer on the enemy team, and simply lose the 1v1 because he outperforms almost every tank on the battlefield.

I'm a tad new, so I might be missing something here. But, from a tier 4 perspective, he has amazing penetration (100), decent firepower (110), good front hull (60, which seems like a lot for most AT and LT, even some mediums) and about 400 HP, which is fine I guess. But overall it seems like too good of a tank for only 100k credits, and no experience required.

If you have any tips to fight against it, I'm all ears. 🙂

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Case and point, just after posting this I came across 3 of them in the enemy team