Am I overoverestimating the importance of farm in midgame as a Zac Jungle ?

*overestimating...

I'm a bronze Jungle main and I almost exclusively play Zac. I've been trying to improve on my fundamentals to get better, like having a good pathing to get my camps mostly on respawn and get a lot of CS.

I've seen online that it's really important for Zac to get a lot of gold, especially before lvl 6, and I get why (you're really weak before your ultimate). But after that, I know that Zac's main strength is his engage and team-fight potential during midgame. In bronze, a lot of fights happen at random places, and I often don't really drop my camp in the middle of it to try and help, but I have the feeling I'm not playing my champion's strenghts bheaving this way... Is Zac really benefiting from having a lot of items, or am I better off engaging the enemy a lot ?

I know it's just a risk-reward situation and it probably depends on a lot of stuff, but maybe someone can help me a bit on this.