GNOME 3 is really all I’ve known, as long as I have Dash to Dock I’m good to go. Any other tweak is just an added bonus.
I’ve used Mint MATE in the past however I never got super into it after that most my experience was with GNOME, I’m trying to make an almost full transition to Linux (a couple games won’t work in Linux for the foreseeable future I don’t think) so I was looking for something sleek, simple, familiar and powerful.
PopOS just seemed to fit it so well.