ohhh, that's a tough one. @StateObject is definitely making things easier, but the trick we've used for now (we’re still targeting iOS 13) is to wrap ViewModels in @State in a parent view, and pass it down to your view as an @EnvironmentObject.

When the subview changes/re-renders, your ViewModel stay the same on the parent view and is not recreated as it is a @State; and your subview can still listen to @PUublished changes.

We've made a generic wrapper for it, and we use almost everywhere:

  struct ViewModelWrapper<V: View, ViewModel: ObservableObject>: View {
    private let contentView: V
    @State private var contentViewModel: ViewModel

    init(contentView: @autoclosure () -> V, vm: @autoclosure () -> ViewModel) {
        self._contentViewModel = State(initialValue: vm())
        self.contentView = contentView()
    }

    var body: some View {
        contentView
            .environmentObject(contentViewModel)
    }
  }