Advice please fellow clashers.

I'm a near-maxed TH9. I have 75% of lvl 10 walls and lots of levels of heroes to go (King 25, Queen 20). I always vowed to be true and max everything before progressing to TH10. Pre-update, farming as we know was considerably easier in comparison to the nightmare it is now. In fact I used two methods that the devs have rubbed out (Queen healer and reliant on the TH snipers). Hey ho, I've accepted it, move on. So. Based on the fact I get my dark elixir taken no matter where I sit on trophy count and considering the cheapest thing to buy costs 3 million loot, is it best to update to TH10? I have a horrible feeling I will be stuck at this level way into next (2017) year.

It pains me to do it as I've worked so hard to max this level. It's just slowed down to a crawl and has become tedious.

Wow. No mods or game specialist will even help?

i dropped to gold 2 and am farming dark elixir like I did pre-update. I personnally loon for dark elixir. You have to make slightly different choices because the league bonus but I generally hit the same bases I did pre-update. This did not work in master or crystal post update, where I lived for more than a year. The league bonus did not make up for the poor base choices there.

Fisherman's theory, you go where the bait fish are to find the fish feeding on them. You will eat just fine.