I was the same way.

The show early on was too much like a soap to me and that was the reason why I never could get into the new Battlestar Galactica series as well as the new Stargate series SGU either.

I love the battles and the action, but imo there was too much of that soap opra feel with the DS9 series for a lot of the episodes..

The Dominion Wars as you mentioned was the highlight of the series for me, loved it.

I love DS9.

My rankings each series (my opinions only, no need to take offence ).

1- TNG ... Were I started. Love the warm lounge room feeling I get.
2- DS9 ... a nice gritty change from differnt perspective of life in Starfleet.
3- Voy ... A fresh clean start after DS9. Just get rid of the Captain :p
4- Ent ... Cool concept to start with, but the Xindi storyline was a total train wreck.
5- TOS ... Love the movies, but series makes me cringe - total rubbish.

Before beard. I changed the channel.
After beard. I could watch it.

I like it. Not the best series (Sisko is annoying as are a few characters) but it gave us some of the finest moments of Trek. And some of the best battles.

Battle of Chin'Toka

Battle for DS9

And let us not forget, Operation Return

DS9... in my honest opinion.... is watchable. But it's no where near as good as TNG, but it's better than VOY.

DS9 got much better with time and it ended up being perhaps the best Star Trek series, in my opinion. Starting around the time of the Klingon-Federation war, the show just got better and better, in my opinion. Mostly very talented actrors/actresses, good story lines, excellent special effects, a lot of suspense, but still "Trek." Was it perfect, no. But it was pretty darn good.

DS9 was my fav series cause the dominon was was completely epic!!!!

Definitely my take on the series as well.

I remember a very sad episode that I though was fantastic. Its the one where Sisko keeps disappearing in front of his son. It goes through Jake's entire life with his father reappearing here and there, and shows how devastated Jake was. It was a very emotional episode