[2022] Main guns are too easy to take out.

It's because in WT aiming is rather easy - you use mouse to point where you want to shot. IRL it's rather super hard to hit barrel and that's why it's not an RL tactics to do so (especially with WW2 tanks and their aiming mechanism).

Instead of fighting it, simply do same if you are not sure if you can get enemy tank with 1 shot.

Damaging barrel give you usually minimum 2 "free" shots into enemy before he will be able to shot you back.