I was quite successful learning Mandarin by using Anki in the way that is typically discouraged, i.e., with a downloaded deck (SpoonFedChinese). I have very little time per day to devote to learning so building my own cars isn't an option, but with this and a couple of last-minute classes I went from HSK2 to HSK3.
I also find Du Chinese and The Chairman's Bao quite useful, although indeed for the writing, nothing seems to substitute actually writing. Right now I can read much more Mandarin than I can write.
Definitely by far the best way to learn to write characters. It is very expensive (compared to most apps, anyway) but its essentially obligatory to spend the money if you are serious about learning the language. When I'm learning Mandarin my favoured method is to work my way through the HSK decks on Skritter, plus a custom deck where I add my own words. Then I make sure to put at least 1 example sentence in Anki for each word that I've learned in Skritter, to reinforce it and place it in a useful context. Skritter itself rather helpfully gives an example sentence for most words. This often then leads me to adding more words to my custom Skritter deck when the example sentence contains other words I don't know yet. In this way I expand my vocabulary beyond just HSK.
I also find Du Chinese and The Chairman's Bao quite useful, although indeed for the writing, nothing seems to substitute actually writing. Right now I can read much more Mandarin than I can write.