Heyy, I wish you all the luck in the world! I tried at max th7 and got close but couldn't finish it (2517). Here are some things I learned on my journey
1. TH sniping is the only working strategy (other than maybe hog/drag strategies, but its still the most reliable). Use Barch and a few giants to pick off open town halls. Around crystal 2, it will get very frustrating :P.
2. Use a farming base in hopes that people will only take your town hall instead of your whole base.
3. Rather than making your base actually good, make it look as intimidating as possible to try and scare off th8s and early th9s (doesn't really work past crystal 3 but whatever)
4. Play for sessions and aim to get more than 50 trophies each session. Note: once you get to around 2300 trophies only try to get 30-50 trophies each session.
5. Here is a MUST: DON'T ever attack if you have a shield UNLESS you are confident that you will be able to play for a long time and get the 50 (or 30-40) trophies
6. Only attack bases you are CONFIDENT you can take on with your army comp EVEN if you just lost a few battles and want the trophies back. (Stay calm) Here is what happened to me: I got really frustrated and started attacking harder bases (it seems insensible but trust me, in the moment, you will want to smash your device). I ended up dropping from 2516 to 2300. It took me another 3 days to get back to 2517 where I finally stopped.
7. always check for hidden teslas on farming bases and drop a few giants to distract them.
8. Before each attack, make sure you have barch close to full army or full army with 6-10 giants.
9. During each attack, have 2 barracks training barbs and 2 barracks training archers to speed up the process.
10. Don't be tempted by juicy resources
Thats all I can think of right now but I will post more if I remember anything else that might help you. Good luck again and please feel free to ask any specific questions you have via PM or in this thread. Good Luck Clashing!
-TenMeister