In the boss fight with the ender dragon, the dragon periodically shoots an area of effect attack that generates excessive particles. These particles seem to cause a very considerable performance hit. When using reduced and minimal particle settings, the particles vanish and performance returns to normal, however, the area of effect attack becomes invisible.
It seems in this situation, particle settings either make the game run very slowly, or make the attacks nearly impossible to detect. It would be appreciated if one of the settings would effectively reduced the number of particles without making the attacks invisible.