Tbh I am fully behind KDE as flagship desktop. Dealing with GNOME users problems all day in the forum, KDE is just better for usability?
GNOME is reduced over the amount that makes sense. KDE could use a bit of reduction, but not as much as GNOMEs. People need the Terminal or random extensions for basic things, this is not a good experience.
On the other hand, GNOME and KDE both have really nice features, GNOME with their Microsoft integrations being particularly powerful (their account system works at all, unlike KDEs which I think nobody uses. But when using Thunderbird, which has standalone Exchange support, you dont use that account system anyways so it doesnt matter again).
Also GNOME has like all their apps on Flathub. GNOME Boxes is particularly crazy, having sandboxed virtualization. This means you can mix match GNOME Flatpaks on a KDE desktop without any problems, KDE even handles the theming for you. On GNOME on the other hand… it actively breaks Qt apps, its insane.
So I think GNOME has some great apps (snapshot, decoder, simplescan, carburetor, celluloid …) but you can install them anywhere.