The strongest of the hobbit trilogy?

It is my favorite of the three, though I have learned to disagree with a vast majority of opinions...

Yeah, I think that's fair. Though I don't think the first one is far behind.

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the bells shall ring in gladness at the mountain kings return

Though still flawed, I prefer AUJ : DOS is the movie that broke the Trilogy beyond repair for me, which is a pity because it started really well !

I love the intro in Bree and the whole Mirkwood part but everything that happened later disappointed me beyond the limit of my patience.

That's a tough call because honestly, all three movies are meant to tell an expansive story. But yes, this movie does have its strengths. The whole Smaug scene is very well done, as is the forest involving the spiders. I do think Jackson went a bit over the top in some scenes, but his Middle Earth in all three HOBBIT movies is still as rich and involving as ever. Do I think the HOBBIT trilogy is on the same level as LOTR? No. But does that make them bad? No. I still enjoyed them. Compared to the STAR WARS prequels, these are far more enjoyable.

My humble opinion is that it was the worst of the three movies. Like Ibbi, I have learned to deal with my opinion being in the minority, haha, but I thought this movie was worse than even TBoTFA.

AUJ was the best movie to me. Yes, it dragged a little due to exposition but people were expecting too much action if they termed it "boring". The first movie of a trilogy sets up everything from plot to characters. This takes time. This movie had the best music and the best natural scenic shots (the type that make you want to travel to New Zealand).

TBoTFA at least walked the path for which it was meant: action fodder. It was overdone, true, and had many many (many)flaws even for an action movie...but it succeeded at its true intention, which was to satisfy as an action movie. If you went into the movie expecting gripping dialogue and plot, the fault lies with you, not the movie itself.

DoS didn't at least have the excuse of being an action movie in intention to atone for what I considered a lack of gripping dialogue and plot. Unlike most people, I think the Smaug-Bilbo dialogue scene was awful and a terrible failure at adapting that scene from Tolkien's work (where I thought a decent job was done at the "Riddles in the Dark "adaptation, though it had flaws as well). That scene was one of the times when I think Freeman's acting was sub-par, but you can also blame direction for that. The 30-45 minute long "filler" at the end of the movie was the icing on the poop. Aside from being pointless (other than to help make three movies instead of two), it was rife with non-sensical tripe that was meant to just showcase more CGI-infused "cleverness".

You could have made a 15-20 minute scene that was adapted straight from the book that would have been more exciting, gripping, realistic, and been used even more effectively to help Smaug make the link to Lake-Town (causing his attack):
The scene in the book when Smaug searches the Mountain.

In the book, Smaug is scorching and smashing the mountain in his search and in his fury for not succeeding. Bombur and Bofur 9I think Bofur) were in the camp at the bottom of the mountain while the others were in the bay before the secret door. They had to lower a rope and pull the other two Dwarves up to the bay while the dragon wreaked havoc with fire and falling rocks all around. That would have been infinitely more gripping than a game of "keep away" with sets of Dwarves running in different directions shouting "over here" and exploding golden statues that were somehow made in 10 minutes and somehow (even though it would weigh thousands of pounds) transported to the main hall.