Steam Deck Performance Settings / Feedback: Steam Deck Optimization

First, the feedback. To GGG: please consider working on a performance pass specificially for Steam Deck. With the Nintendo Switch 2 pricing being... questionable and the Nintendo of America president stating that the prices are fair and unlikely to be lowered, the Steam Deck is seeming like a very competitive option for handheld gaming. See my feedback at the bottom of this post below the following section.

For what I'm assuming at least a good amount of you clicked this for:
Behold, my Deck settings. These settings seek to achieve a *relatively stable* 30 - 35 FPS with a frame delta of +/– 4 or 5 FPS on my unmodified Steam Deck OLED. These settings may or may not be battery friendly, but I manage to get about an hour and a half of life most days using the below.

Display Settings
RENDERER: Vulkan
DISPLAY: AMD Radeon Graphics
MODE: Fullscreen
VSYNC: Adaptive
DYNAMIC RESOLUTION: Unchecked (Optional; turn on for more frame stability but much worse image quality, bordering on illegible)
WINDOW RESOLUTION: 1280 x 800
UPSCALE MODE: NIS
RENDER RESOLUTION: 77% - 985 x 616
SHARPNESS: 10%
HDR: Checked
SCENE BRIGHTNESS: 2.5
UI BRIGHTNESS: 2.5

Detail Settings
TEXTURE QUALITY: High
TEXTURE FILTERING: Trilinear Filtering
LIGHTING: Shadows
SHADOW QUALITY: Low
SUN SHADOW QUALITY: Low
NUMBER OF LIGHTS: Medium
BLOOM: 100%
WATER DETAIL LEVEL: Low

Advanced Settings
NVIDIA REFLEX: Off (can't be enabled anyway)
FOREGROUND FPS CAP: Checked (35)
BACKGROUND FPS CAP: Unchecked (30)
TRIPLE-BUFFERING: Checked
DYNAMIC CULLING: Unchecked
TARGET FRAMERATE: 28
ENGINE MULTITHREADING: Checked

You can see my Game Report issue for the DeckSettings plugin here for a bit more information on these settings:
https://github.com/DeckSettings/game-reports-steamos/issues/59

Back to GGG: The Steam Deck presence is growing, and fairly rapidly, and I think your game will benefit greatly from proper support. What do I mean by this? Well, currently it is *very* difficult to get settings that allow for 30 FPS without significant frame drops of 6 FPS or more during "active" scenes on the highest-performance OLED model of the Deck. This includes using features such as XeSS and FSR. A note about those two features: these AI upscaling features work fine on higher resolutions common to laptop/desktop gaming (can't speak to console), however, on the Steam Deck's smaller resolution of 1280 x 800, both Xess and FSR introduce *serious* ghosting, fading, and artifacting to the point where some projectiles become completely invisible, just as one example. These implements are just not suitable for increasing performance on the Deck. Similar issue with Dynamic Resolution, which again reduces the already-small resolution to the point where hardly anything is visible; it's like playing the game with a myopic filter on. All this to say that adequate performance on the Steam Deck is not achievable on the most expensive model. To put it more directly: I'm not expecting to run 90 FPS to match the hardware's 90 Hz refresh rate—few games support that anyhow. Rather, I am suggesting a benchmark of about 30 - 40 FPS for the LCD models and 40 - 50 FPS for the OLED model with a delta in frame drops of fewer than +/– 7 FPS for stability.I recommend this benchmark for the Deck's standard resolution of 1280 x 800 and without the use of FSR/XeSS for the reasons mentioned above. The Vsync option currently does not help with this on the Deck. Even if this means making a setting preset or toggleable Deck Mode, it would be a start for a standard where players could give better, more targeted feedback on PoE's performance on the Deck.

Again, I really think you have done a superb job of making Path of Exile 2 not only available for console/controller/handheld players, but undoubtedly a smooth experience that feels great and makes sense. This makes PoE 2 *highly* attractive to both existing Deckers and prospecting couch gamers (many of which will likely be considering a Steam Deck as a familiar, and relatively budget-friendly, foray into PC gaming from their couches or on-the-go. "a smooth experience that feels great and makes sense"; that's a strong statement. Unfortunately, the statement doesn't factor in the performance of the game on Steam Deck, which the performance is currently unsuitable for the type of game that PoE 2 is.