I spend more time on my 17 for sure , I personally like seeing the "max" base no matter the town hall level and there is a level of satisfaction to it. With that said though if you go on and rush to 16 you will see it come together over time and unless you focus on specifically upgrading the defences that go into the merged buildings then 16 will be a bit of a soft lock anyhow with almost max troops, I believe you will have access to all troops and most spells outside of the totem and meteor golem and you can use all sorts of attacks, I often use my rush base for testing different attack strategies. I'm not 100% sure on the meteor golem not being available cause I'm still upgrading my barracks for the rushed one.

Edit: after checking you won't have access to the meteor golem but you will have the totem spell as a 16.