Best early characters to build in NTE (low-end setup)

Coming back after a long break and trying to catch up. The default settings are clearly tuned for a different setup than mine.

Marking this solved once something actually works.

Same boat here. give it a clean reinstall before assuming the hardware is at fault.

Depends on your setup, but broadly keep a note of what you changed, otherwise you cannot undo it cleanly later.

Worth checking first: nine times out of ten it is a driver or a background process, not the thing you suspect.

Worth a shot before anything drastic.

Only partly related, but it is almost always a setting rather than hardware, so try the free fixes before spending anything.

Worth checking first: it depends heavily on your specific setup, so take any single number with a grain of salt.

Speaking as someone who got it wrong initially, keep a note of what you changed, otherwise you cannot undo it cleanly later.

Slightly different take — the averages hide the problem; look at the one percent lows instead.

Worth a shot before anything drastic.

Not the answer you want, but ignore the loudest advice; the boring answer is usually the correct one here.

Short version: temperature is the usual culprit when performance degrades over a session.

Agreed on most of this, except check whether an overlay is running before blaming the game itself.

Adding to the above: do the cheap diagnostic first — it costs nothing and rules out half the causes.

Others may have a cleaner method.

Agreed on most of this, except the difference is real but small enough that you may not notice it while playing.

That fixed it for me, at least.

For what it is worth, the safe move is the reversible one — you can always undo it if it makes things worse.

In my testing, verify the files before anything else; it catches more problems than people expect.

For what it is worth, it depends heavily on your specific setup, so take any single number with a grain of salt.

Report back once you have tried it.

Not the answer you want, but the averages hide the problem; look at the one percent lows instead.

This comes up a lot, so: measure before and after, otherwise you are just guessing whether it helped.

Worth checking first: region and server load matter more than most guides acknowledge.

Worth a shot before anything drastic.

Adding to the above: temperature is the usual culprit when performance degrades over a session.