Possibly controversial #Linux opinion:
I think #Gnome should seriously consider moving the top bar to the side. 2 reasons:
1. Vertical space is more valuable than horizontal in most cases, because there's less of it (especially as the number of ultra widescreens increases) and probably most things you look at while not in full screen mode is taller than wide.
2. By moving the bar to the side the hot corner can be moved to the bottom, significantly decreasing the distance to the dash/dock
The bar on the side would need to use a lot more space since the text in most of the world is horizontal not vertical, also I don't see how changing the corner would make the difference since mouse cursor is mostly in a very central area of the screen so every corner is about the same distance from the mouse. In either case I don't see the problem with current implementation and I think that changing it would only produce a worse outcome.
What I do like doing on my systems is hiding the top bar all together when not in overview since I don't need that information all the time and it's easy to access it when I need it with one flick of the mouse or tap on the super key. Of course I don't want to argue that that's a good default, but it works great for me
@gloopsies I get that way of doing it, but I prefer to always be able to see the clock. If there was a way to only have to clock visible, but no other part of the bar, I'd probably prefer that. The early @elementary OS seemed to have something like that, with their Wingpanel, but they moved away from that pretty quickly unfortunately.