Ethan should describe his approach of improving long combos here :D
To be serious, perfect 'distribution' in hardcore lowers is: strong foot - out tricks, weak - in. It means that you 'strong' atws should be in for weak foot and out for strong. Of course, tricks of 2nd stage(tatw, matw,...,kamatw,katatw+basic abbas-moves) must be learnt by both feet.
That's why what is useless for hardcore lowers:
-strong foot: smth harder in abbas-tricks than beck atw, ahmatw, ahtatw;
-weak foot: latw out.
For boths: crosses, rcrosses, tb and other bullshit.
About methods - it's worth to write a book - too much to say.