I find it weird that you do not care for DE since it affects your workflow, but anyway.
My take is if you need the latest packages go for Arch if you have the time, Manjaro if you do not and finally Debian for rock solid stability.
I agree, using WM is like a using a car, its obviously easier to use something ready out-of-the-box but it does not feel as good as customizing your own. Just like people treat cars as their identity you can do the same in your computer and the fact that in some cases you can achieve better performance in your workflow.
To me it is like any investment, if it shaves some little time every day, eventually it will pay off.
I think it has some google libraries to integrate google drive and some other things(not sure). Personally I did not like the workflow. maybe because I am a Lawnchair user.
Forced?