Performance is utter garbage.

Just how in the hell does performance keep getting worse and worse every single league?!

Seriously, every single time I run into an Ultimatum, this happens:
My PC instantly hitches to 0 FPS for a solid 3-5 seconds, and all I can do is mash the spacebar and 123451234512345 HOPING that my spells are doing things and that I don't end up dead when I get my frames back.

I've tried lowering my graphics settings, disabling sound effects, fullscreen and no matter what, same shit keeps happening:

And no, this isn't exclusive to just ultimatum, but whenever any new shit needs to be rendered on-screen, it takes a solid second MINIMUM of zero FPS to load it. Use flame dash for the first time after logging in. Zero FPS. Walk into a pack of monsters of a type I hadn't run into for the past minute. Zero FPS. One of those monsters drops a sword. Zero FPS. Drink a flask. Zero FPS. Enter a town. Solid minute just to load all the players and MTX's. Delirium. Welp, good fucking luck trying not to crash while standing still in the fog. I don't understand how this game is so poorly optimized.

It just fucking sucks that I've spent 3000+ hours on this game, only to get a league where we either die or crash if we even try to interact with the league mechanic because of how poorly optimized it is. I could do what everyone else is trying to do by deluding myself into thinking that all these performance issues will disappear when PoE 2 rolls out, but the reality is that Path of Exile is an old, dying horse with a broken back, and new bags of shiny content constantly get tossed on it while the underlying problem is consistently overlooked.

I've said this once, and I'll say it again, REVERT every single change you've made to attempt to 'improve' performance ever since Blight league, it's all been downhill from there. (This isn't entirely true. There was a period around mid-delirium league where stuff was performing very smoothly.) Everything was running smooth as butter on my PC during Legion league, and honestly, I haven't had as much fun since then.

same shit