The fact that you're calling it a DE suggests that you're probably already familiar with the alternatives... but I'll bite anyway!
I love the i3 window manager with rofi launcher, because tiling windows and keyboard-centric controls are awesome.
But I've mostly been using gnome and kde plasma (tweaked to look like gnome). I would suggest gnome for its simplicity and beauty, but wkth KDE plasma you can really customize the living hell out of your de.