The Blue cloner has its place, and your usecase sounds ideal.
Check out
Please dont tell me it was a white cloner?
The Proxmark3 is a great tool (I have a love hate relationship with it)
One really important thing is, getting the EXACT positioning to get good coupling. mm of positioning can make all the difference…
Have you read up about lf tune
this will help you learn the perfect spot
If you are planning to do a lot of writing to your LF chip, I would suggest you consider a Flipper Zero.
Seriously a great little tool.