I've been using gnome as a "base" DE for years, what that means is I install it, then install my tiling wm and use all the gnome utilities.
I recently had to set up a few new machines and decided to try KDE on a couple and I'm really enjoying it. I haven't even gotten around to installing a tiling wm because I want to learn a wayland option and that'll take some time. I haven't ran into pain points listed here but one thing I like is when I want to do X, there's usually already something ready to do X for me. Years of gnome and I felt like the devs were always fighting me. I haven't really used a full gnome setup in a few years though, but I know the "mommy knows best" attitude is still prevalent with the devs.
Hm I'm not sure if that'd really give me what I'm looking for. I know its certainly possible to configure KDE and Polonium to get me 90% there but I think I'd rather just have a normal floating setup I can switch to if need be. I'd need to remap a significant amount of keyboard shortcuts that would stop making sense in the context of a full floating DE.
I really just want a very fast app launcher like dmenu, dynamic tiling, and monitor independent workspaces. I have a particular setup using certain alpha keys for my workspace.
I never really enjoyed the experience of tacking things onto an existing DE and having to mess with UI configuration. I've been really loving XMonad for a few setups and my ideal wm would be something that's extremely low power and low fluff. Even if I only eek out 10% more battery life, breaking the 10hr mark is more valuable to me than most bells and whistles.
I'm just really lazy. I could load up my xmonad setup in 20 minutes but I wanted to see the state of wayland and that requires learning a new wm's configuration quirks.