While laden with heavy armor reinfocements that rob from its performance against fighters, it does have them and is more forgiving to taking a beating in a fight.
This is demonstrably not true. I, and other pilots that have flown the A8 and the A5 excessively have deemed there is no extra armor added. In fact it has all the weight but none of the armor. If it had the armor modeled, it would never lose guns or engine oil due to return fire. It loses oil almost always. It has a glass jaw. This is absolute evidence that the extra armor is not present.
It's really no more durable than the A-5 variant. It can take a few solid hits if you're lucky, though the same can be said for many a plane in this game. Many a time it will go down in 1 burst from your attacker, if the attacker's aim is true.
You will find you lose your cannons regularly, you lose your oil almost always, and you can get pilot wounds very freely, when flying the 190A-8. PWs aren't as bad as, say, the tempest or the mossie, but higher than I get in 109s and the like.
As for dogfighting in the A8: It is a labor of love. You have to really love the plane, or really hate yourself, to dogfight in it a lot. That is to say, it has its own little style. You can BnZ in it all you like, and definitely get kills, but that's not what I'm talking about when I say dogfight. I mean get in, mix it up in a crowd, and repeatedly approach the stall while working for a perfect snapshot.
As an overall fighter it is deadly if it lands a shot on you, but this includes picks, bounces, BnZs, vulches, afk-deaths, look-up-and-see-a-plane-passing-and-squeaze-the-trigger-to-kill-it, and all manner of MA engagements that won't really stress the airframe like a tight furball will. For all of the former, it can be fun. For that latter category, it is as I described above: more for love of the plane than enjoyment of its capabilities.
