Sorry, but this whole topic is waste of time. Panther is a grat tank. The best in fact. Very fast, good armour, good amount of hit points, excellent penetration and it hits like a train. No Soviet armour can go toe to toe with it except for IS-2. After Vet1 it becomes a killing machine.
If you're loosing against SU-85 or any other tank it means two things:
1. Your opponent is way better than you.
2. You're doing it wrong.
1v1 is a bit different and is not unusual to not build heavy tanks or even go T4 for both factions. I could complain that I almost never build IS-2 in 1v1. That's not even a valid argument. There is no need to go T4 as PzIV is more than enough to deal with anything Soviet player will throw at you.
I think a lot of people are mistaking what this topic is supposed to be about. I'm not arguing that the panther is bad inherently. I'm not saying "SU85 vs Panther who wins". I'm saying that the panther, today, is not cost effective when compared to its peers and other purchasing decisions. Furthermore, because of the unique scenario where the panther is forced to be aggressive on account of SU85's existence, it's also inherently a high risk scenario due to rushing into an ambush, mine, ATnade, whatever and losing it or worse, giving it to the enemy.
A tank that cost 2000mp and 500 fuel and one shot any unit would be pretty good on paper, but the problem is the cost. You would never be able to field it in a game where it could make a difference. Obviously this is an exaggerated and somewhat ridiculous example, yet still analogous to the panther's situation.
The panther is okay. But for its cost, I would gladly take x2 panzer4 (since MP is the limiting factor in most cases) or 1x panzer4 and a shrek squad. The tiger, on the other hand, is generally worth saving for and is not that much more expensive than the panther yet significantly better in all regards except speed. Thus, the conclusion is that the panther is not cost effective.
It might be "the best" tank on paper in your opinion, but its complete lack of practical application in regular play or in tourney play, either 1v1 or 2v2, means that everyone at least tacitly acknowledges that there's an issue with it. I'm not sure how the 3v3 or 4v4 scenes play out, but historically speaking in any game those have been high tier spam fests so probably not a good indicator.
EDIT: Minor clarification.