Funnily, I find I am most productive in Gnome 3, despite its many flaws. The workflow that revolves around the super key to view, launch, and switch between windows and desktops works very well, and I have not been able to fully recreate the same experience in any of the other DEs (though I haven't tried Budgie).

One big change that helped reduce the performance lag is turning off animations using the Tweak Tool. It was like a breath of fresh air once I made that adjustment.