Backlinks are imporant and even though Google tries to downplay it, but it’s still the most important element of why a site ranks (besides content on the page & keyword relevancy).

It used to be that quantity could trump quality, but now quality matters more than just tons of spammy backlinks. You want a mix of backlinks and remember DA is Moz’s way of providing a pagerank-like measurement for optimizers – it’s not a measure of Google’s trust in that backlink, so take it directionally.