Damn Wizard. Not so magical. Followed your advice on the -skipcrowds modifier. I guess my microstuttering/slideshow problem must have started when I took this advice but I had blamed a new build. Turns out that when you use the -skipcrowds modifier, the game defaults to DX9 instead of DX11. DX9 runs like crap on my system. Everything now works a lot smoother and looks a lot better.