TH 8 storage cap

Once all defenses are max for TH 8, working on walls is a must. However, maxing out walls at TH 8 is the biggest disparity of the game so far, since you will cap out on both elixir and dark elixir. The requirement of this clan is to work on walls until capping out on dark elixir (either by natural storage cap or by the amount you can keep from being raided).

Upgrading troops will curb the loss experienced for a good amount of time. There are also things you can do to help prevent massive elixir loss (outlined below).

Once you are capping out on dark elixir, you can move onto TH 9 and work towards this point in order to war (see below for advantages).

A method for farming with excess elixir
Army make-up is 6 dragons, 12 balloons and 10 minions with 2 lightning, rage and 1 earthquake.

Queue up dragons, balloons, lightning and earthquake because they are always used (you can un-queue 2 dragons if you attacked a TH 7 with only 4 dragons). Queue up minions and poison only after the fact if you used them.

Farm every hour that you can, dropping shield since resources are not an issue (gold is being dumped into walls). Attack anything that is over 200k gold and doesn't have multiple lvl 6 AD.

Dropping elixir to a certain point is good for not being a larger target for farmers. You can upgrade a Gold Mine and cancel it or just buy and sell decorations to get rid of excess elixir.

You can also put your elixir storage's outside of your base to protect any DE or gold that you may care about. Throwing all elixir storage's and collectors into a corner is quite effective and gives trophies, depending on your base.

Advantages for TH 9
You can use all resources for upgrades, even though you are behind a bit initially. It takes longer to opt into war but it is a trade off.

You can farm very efficiently at TH 9 using your queen.

Queen + Healer (pre-update)

Queen + Healer (post-update)

More examples

More research (longwinded)