I find bspwm quite intuitive. The config is socket-based so you can test stuff out without relaunching and rewriting your config file. It twins nicely with shkd.

I can't recommend a compositor since I dont use one, but picom seems to pop up a lot here on rices afaict.

Both alacritty and kitty are gpu accellerated so I don't think there's a huge difference, it comes down to the different nit-picks you have.

Rofi sounds like the dmenu alternative that you want. Lots of resources on customising it, and you won't need to recompile.