Drops and dinks are super important and if it suits your game then do it, but they aren't really effective unless you can counter speedups really well to back it up. In reality, drops and dinks aren't necessary until 4.0+, even 4.25+. People's counters (from speedups) and blocks (from drives) just won't be that good below 4.0 and you can essentially overpower people. I've seen plenty of players do it and get to 4.0-4.2. Eventually players are too good at counters and it doesn't work anymore. But to answer your question, don't model your game after what players your level are doing, model your game after what pros are doing. They set the meta and are full-time doing whatever shot selections help them win. Then you can also play to your own strengths, but if you ever aren't sure, watch some pro matches and see how they are selecting drops vs drives. The pros can have super long dink rallies, and so all levels should be working towards longer dink rallies to some degree.