PoE 2 Performance Unplayable

Not sure what's been happening lately but I've been trying to log back into PoE2 after playing the PoE1 League for a week or so, but PoE2 quite literally lag spikes constantly and then kicks me out of the game. The F1 meters show near constant spikes with the Shader almost constantly peaked. My PC is up to date as well as the drivers, I've done a fresh reinstall but nothing works. Would love to get some time into PoE2 before the next big patch drop but the game is literally unplayable from the performance issues.

I'm sure I'm an idiot and it's something simple, but I couldn't figure it out.

you are not the only one, game has been in this horrible state since launch of 0.3.0, later in 0.3.1 performance got even worse with tons of bugs added too