When someone like you, who has such an established account complains about the game  being a joke, it reinforces my own 'why am I even still playing' and why would anybody even start now?

The wise ones, are those that looked, played, and left ,almost as soon as they started.

A gamer sees that a shift has taken place (in this case a shift in favour of offence over defence) and starts to work out how to adjust their play.

I have almost no experience of Jot but from what I have seen the small to medium sized players have been used to go there unshielded and hope for someone to attack them, by arrangement or by chance, and thereby to acquire soul shards.  Perhaps that particular technique will now fall our of fashion.

Another technique that can be seen is for a clan to offer an unshielded town at less than palace 40 as a battleground.  The rest of the clan stays shielded and sends reinforcements as and when a suitable attacker offers.  Small scale attacks and defences occur and both sides gain some shards.  I suspect that technique will continue to have currency.  The absurd WRET visitors will continue to have no interest in such skirmishing, partly because the numbers of troops engaged is too small, and partly because the clan offereing the battleground will not offer troops when the attacker or potential attacker is the obese WRET.

I have no experience at all as regards monsters in Jot but no doubt those who go there to hit monsters will continue to do so.

I am not a small player but a 300 B palace 36 player but I sometimes go to Jot for a minute or two when the very short events are on.  I find a target and make a tiny number of kills which gets me a place in the prize list for my League.

No doubt there are other tactics and opportunities in Jot.  

Looking at your post makes me think that all this is somewhat beside the point for you.  You spent time and money seeking to make your town competitive and now adjusting, and lowering, your sights to take account of the changes in the game is seemingly of no interest.  Not for you the time and effort required to find targets within your military scope.  That is for gamers not shoppers.

Although, who knows?  While you refrain from shopping and just play you might discover satisfaction in exploring the limits of what you can do.

I'm level 27 and I feel like a survivor if I can spend two days in Jot scouting and hitting towns without getting burned lol. 

 It is very hard at my level to get any checkpoints. If I find a town with a decent number of troops that I can hit then by the time I have added all the boosts I need to succeed some bigger player has found my place of interest and hit it first. 

 ... although I did get a reward this time for being in the top 100 for my league so that was  a bonus.