Striping below the topping when manifolding? First time attempting

I do something like nebulas manifolding technique from growweedeasy If you type “nebulas manifold” in google it’ll pop up. I’ve always felt that the first two nodes on the main stem never have the same vigor as nodes after it.. so I usually take them off completely and use the 3rd or 4th node.. i usually do one where I grow out two nodes so there’s 4 main branches coming off the main stem. It gets a bit crowded that way but it works.