This type of thing happens to me every time a new xpac prepatch releases, since Legion. I built a new PC for Legion because stuttering and fps drops became intolerable with the Legion prepatch, where I hadn’t experienced issues before. With the new PC, I was still only able to run with graphics at level 8 I think, but it was smoother than the old PC.
When BFA prepatch hit, same deal: back to stuttering and fps drops in places that were fine before the prepatch, and I had to tweak settings down to 7-ish to smooth things out.
Come SL prepatch, same deal again with the stuttering and fps drops in places that were fine before the prepatch, and I had to tweak settings down to 6-ish to smooth things out.
I built a new PC just two months ago, and could crank the graphics up to 8. Hooray! Except now, here we go again at the prepatch for DF: stuttering and fps drops and I’ll probably have to adjust the settings downward yet again.
And this isn’t even in new areas that I experience these issues, it’s in older areas that were fine before the patch. It happens every single time. I don’t know what Blizzard does, but it’s beyond frustrating.
Edit: and the PCs I build are not toasters, okay? This most recent one is an i7-12700k, overclocked to 4.7GHz, with a 3070ti and plenty of RAM. It’s mind boggling that a PC like this isn’t able to run WoW smoothly.