Strengths and Weaknesses of Anti-3 Layout

Anyone who follows my YouTube channel knows that I am the leader of a highly competitive FPC war clan. Part of playing at the level we do is anti-3 star base layouts.

I am not so sure that the anti-3 layout is all that it is cracked up to be. Here are some of the weakness I've noticed:

1. Mitigated damage. Often defences are so spread out that the enemy's troops do not have to endure as much burst damage. They can sustain longer.
2. When using an anti-3 layout, you are heavily reliant on your traps. You won't defend by bursting the enemy down. You're only going to win by blowing up their hogs.
3. As soon as your traps are uncovered, it's GG. A strong attacker will AQ walk and eliminate your traps. Finish with hogs.
4. You are highly susceptible to being AQ walked.

Now, I'm just typing this out quickly. I didn't mention anything about Air because I don't find I am hit with air often, but that's obviously a concern as well.

Anti-2 have pros and cons as well...

Anyway. Looking for thoughts. There has to be something nice in between. Compact, but spread enough to mask traps.

Traps and their placement plays huge role in th9 defending against 3-stars. Only option is to make sure that traps works and are hard to reach with skill squad etc.. An excelent anti3 will survive 1 or more attacks before it's 3-starred. With anti2 layout a solid attacker that knows 3-star strats will crush your base with his first attempt. That is because it's impossible to place your traps unpredictable and effective places, and at the same time make them hard to reach with "wrong units". And one thing: TH9 defs simply can't deal so much damage that healed hogs won't survive. They need all the help from traps what they can.

I think it really depends on the level of the players in the clan you're facing. If they have good heroes and troops, then by all means throw up an anti 3 base. If their only viable attack is a trashy gowipe with less than teenage heroes, throw up an anti 2 base with craptastic funnel opportunities.

Don't use anti-3 layouts against mediocre opponents. These bases are designed against "pro" anti-3 strats like GoHo, GoLava, MAX, etc, which ironically makes them more vulnerable to vanilla Gowipe armies! I've seen the best layouts get 3-starred by a lucky Gowiper... and when you fight mediocre clans then your base will get hit by a LOT of gowipes and at least one of them will get lucky.