Topping and taking cuttings from mother plants

I've seen conflicting perspectives on whether I should take my cuttings from the top of my mothers or from side growth. Ideally, I'm interested in propagating the best clones but simultaneously developing the mother in such a way that when she goes 12/12, her bud count is maxed.

It LOOKS like trimming for more than 4 colas isn't a great idea, and I've raised / harvested some goofy looking mother plants that were kinda growing all over the place, I believe because of the way I took cuttings.

My clones generally are successful 100% of the time, and they sprout in 5-7 days, so I'm pretty happy with this process. I think my (personal) weakest portion of the grow now is veg, and that I can improve the end shape and thus yield of the mother....and possibly the appearance / shape of the clones...by changing WHERE on the mother I take the clones.

Any wisdom from y'all?

You can prune it for 50+ tops if you want, but you'll just need a big pot to support enough roots to feed all those potential buds. As for where you take the cutting from in regards to the mother's shape/growth, you can just take them from wherever you want one branch to spit into 2, BUT the lower branches are recommended for the cuttings sake. More starch in the branches = better rooting.

I've taken the tops, the sides, the scrawniest of little scrub branches at the very very VERY bottom of the plant....

All have cloned without a problem..

On the other hand, I've taken clones from all of these same sites and have had them die as well...

The last run I had.... I had a 16 site ex-cloner, all the clones on one side were fine, all the other clones on the other side got slime and died... I have NO idea......either way, I've taken it all apart and am resetting everything.