Someone school this newb

I need help making progress. I can't seem to make any progress as of now. My base defense is attached. I have level 4 archers, lvl 4 barbarians, lvl 4 goblins, lvl 5 giants, lvl 5 wizards, lvl 3 healers, lvl 1 dragons and pekka, barbarian king lvl 2, and lvl 4 wall breakers, and lvl 1 minions.

I just recently dropped from 1780 trophies to just under 1400 purposely. I can't seem to win battles without a butt load of wizards and giants and two healers at the lvl I was fighting at. With that combination I could steam roll a lot of strong opponents but could not make much profit due to the cost of everything in order to win battles and getting attacked myself. I was just spinning my wheels.

I have never looked at forums or videos before yesterday and it came to my attention that there is a certain way to go about things to make steady progress. I am seeking people who are qualified to help me out by pointing me in the right direction. Take a look at my base and critique it as well as give me a list of priorities starting with most important at my level and with what I have so far. I am also asking for a school lesson on how to attack properly with my archers, barbarians, and goblins. I need a good army make up and basic lesson on how to deploy them properly. Basically this NEWB needs a attack 101 lesson. I also would like to know what my priorities should be when it comes to upgrades. What should I focus my resources on first, right now.

Typically when I raid I clear paths for wall breakers with giants for distraction and take out air defense, drop healers unleash everything I got and hope for the best. It worked out for a while then as I got higher it didn't. So I got me some bad ♥♥♥ wizards and the strategy works again but It really doesn't. I spend too much time and resources making this army.

I don't really know much, I have made it to this point and realize that I have probably struggled to get here after reading some of the threads. Please don't let me struggle anymore lol.

Help this NEWB! Assume I know very little and start from there.

read some of the guides dotted about on the forums about farming, then upgrade your offense first.

On our clan webpage sneakysanta.wordpress.com you can find some tips and hints on strategy.

Hope it is useful

Santa

And here some help for the base.

For the attacking, I would suggest going back to basics. Cheap, fast to make army and raid often to learn the ropes. Ignore the trophies, they will come on their own and settle to a level which reflects your attacking power.
My recipes for army are:
4-8 wb
1/4 archers
1/4 barbarians
2/4 goblins

Or for heavier bases
8-12 giants
6-10 wb
50-80 archers
Goblins
(20 barbs, if going bit lighter on giants)

Pick an army composition and stick to it untill you are comfortable with it. Then adjust it according to how you feel it's lacking. Don't be shy to just steal bit of gold and lix from mines with gobbos and surrendering.

I think your base is fine, could perhaps be tweaked, but check out the bases on other threads for improvement.
Stay away from expensive troops like dragons and Pekkas.
You have 200 troops capacity I'm guessing? Work on your deployment, maybe you're missing a trick, watch how people have successfully attacked your base. I use Giant/healer attack backed with Barbs, Archers, Goblins and WBs. Others use different combinations, but most successful combos will have a large amount of archers and goblins, as they are cheap and effective.

WB deployment is key, and getting it right can be the difference between winning and losing.

GL!

BB

Depends what you're after from your time, resources or trophies?

If you're looking for resources to help build up your defenses and walls then I'd stick around the 1200-1400 trophy range. There are lots of abandoned bases and lower level TH's with relatively easy to attack bases.

At that range as a TH8 I can easily pick up 180-250k gold raids (I'm not that concerned with Elixir) withouth having to search for a long time to find a suitable base.

Your aim should be (again for resources) for an army that is cheap and quick to train. For me I don't go with wizards, drags or pekkas as they take far too long. My standard army is:

9 Giants
10 WB's
75 Archers
65 Barbs

plus whatever is in my CC.

This takes around 20 mins to train, so you can raid at least three times an hour. Some bases you won't need the full army so you can save on this time.

I had a little trip up to the 1500-1800 range a few weeks ago and it was noticeably harder to obtain decent loot with the increase in standard of bases and levels.

So my advice would be to drop some trophies and go for quick and cheap armies for efficient farming.

If all of your tier 1 troops aren't level 5 I'd concentrate on getting them up as well.

Hope that helps.

Be patient when you attack. Try to use wallbreakers to guide your giants to go where you want them to go by opening up holes in the defenses in the general direction you want them to go, with an emphasis on trying to keep them together (usually).

Stay at the 1100-1500 trophy range, and drop as appropriate to stay there and farm. When you drop trophies, do so by dropping a troop on a base whose development/TH level suggests that they'd struggle to revenge you. The last thing you want is to be on 50 revenge lists belonging to people who could wipe you out if they wanted to.

Develop a keen sense of whether loot is in storages or mines/collectors. If it's unclear, drop a couple of goblins near a mine and see how quickly the loot available decreases. No reason to use all your troops on trying to get to the storages in the middle if the loot is in the mines, and that's sometimes hard to recognize.

The advice suggested prior is all reasonable as well. :)

If you are farming, don't use wizards. They are a fun troop to use, but their long training time + expensive cost makes them not viable for farming. Healers are also a very situational troop: anti air defense can really devastate a giant-healer army.

I really recommend maxing out your gobs, archers, barbs, and wallbreakers, since those are your primary farming troops (along with giants)

What you should do is use barbs or giants as a meat shield, deploy archers behind them, and let the archers do the main damage while the giants/barbs protect the archers. Then, you can easily penetrate the base (depending on how good the base is)

Thanks for the feedback guys. I appreciate it. I'm thinking that I should focus on my walls for upgrades and my archer goblins and barbarians for upgrading as well. I will work on it.