I used to have a bunch of cool little extensions (and a few big ones, like dash to dock), but upgrading to a new version is always a removed. Plugins stop working and then a process starts where you're looking for updates if or when they'll be updated, if alternatives exists, etc. The system never feels the same to me.

Yep. I personally like the approach of having a pretty decent system by default and then install extensions for customizing it, rather than having a bloat load of options.

absolutely, i use Dash to Dock, Just Perfection, Hide Top Bar, Gesture Improvements, Awesome Tiles and Battery Indicator Icon to make it just how I want it

For me, it's not really to the point where I would use it as a primary browser, but it's still pretty damn good. Definitely worth a try.

Shouldn't be blurry if you run Wayland supported apps. For me only Jetbrains products are blurry since they use Java which doesn't support fractional scaling.

I assume you enabled experimental fractional scaling in gnome?

Sarcasm: You can no longer see your running applications. But fear not, they plan to give you a menu of running applications in the next release so you can close them if they ever get minimized.