Long Term Strategy for Getting +5000 trophies

Question

I'm curious about which strategy is better for getting +5000 trophies in the long term:

1. (The one I'm using) I'm requesting just one type of card, and spending all my gold upgrading everything the game allows me to in order to obtain experience faster. I never buy more than 4 cards(Rare and Common) in the game store. From my point of view this gives a slow but steady rise of trophies in the game, and usually I have one KT level more than the people with my same level cards on the tower level. But when I face people with my KT level I'm usually behind in cards level, and I never have as much gold since I spend it ASAP.

2. (The one most of my clanmates and friends use) Most people stay with one deck, so they upgrade those cards and buy a lot of those from the store, spending the gold mostly in the one deck. As they accumulate tons of gold they usually buy the vaults from the store that are on discount. This strategy allows them to accumulate trophies really fast, but they are 2 levels down in TK level.

This is my question: which strategy is better in order to achieve +5000 trophies (I will also accept a different strategy yielding better results). Currently I'm around 3600 and KT level 11, and most of my cards are lvl 10(common), lvl 8(rare), or lvl 2(legendary). I don't use the epics, instead just upgrading them for the experience.

Answer 1

In my opinion, the 2nd strategy is much better.

Now why is it so?

1. Using just one deck will give you the advantage of higher card levels, which is way better than just better KT level, for example, I have been using arrows in almost all of my decks, even in arena 10 now, and I have this card on level 11, so I can one-shot lower level archers(which is surprisingly common) with it.
2. Upgrading everything possible can leave you with no cards, unable to donate them, as donating is a more efficient way of leveling up your King's tower(if you are not a pay2win player).
3. Again, if you are a free to play player, it is better to save money, so that you can buy expensive cards in the shop that you will play almost any deck(like Legendary cards), so you can upgrade them. By donating, also, you earn not just XP, but even in-game gold.
4. Using a deck or deck type for a long time also gives you the advantage of skill when playing this deck type. If you change your style, it takes long to gain skill for that deck, so, it is more beneficial to upgrade cards of just 1 deck.

Yeah. Always when I meet a level 9 KT with level 12 or 13 elite barbarians or Royal giant, It is harder to beat than someone with KT level 11 or even 12 with tournament standard levels of cards.

Hope that helped :)