Can we stop doing this? Every piece (other than valks) is important at some point. Neglecting big bombs, or air mines, or canons, or walls WILL be a problem at some point. Upgrading all that stuff at TH8 takes time and not having L3 dragons makes you completely worthless at TH8 that entire time for war.
This desire to rush the game and constantly skip stuff because "it's not important" is silly. It almost always ends up creating more problems than it solves and I wish we'd stop with it.
Drags give us nothing at FBGS anymore. This might be true if the clans you face have more than 5 or 6 non max TH8, but quite simply a max TH8 will not fall to max dragons. Period.
Early TH9 can go in and sweep up those TH8s with a shuke and get 100% every, single, time.
TH8 is a one month TH. If you are a war person. If not, them max it out and play casually.
The right TH to max out is TH7. You can make a lot of wall progress and other progress at that level including getting king to 5 now due to the DE drill and other TH7 having DE.
TH8 is useless for war. Completely, utterly, useless.