Question Estimating how many Visual Effect clones are possible in a scene

Most VFXgraph examples are for a single gameobject (e.g., a bonfire, a portal, an electric arc, etc.).

I'm trying to wrap my head around how to budget for how many clones I can make in a scene before the framerate crashes.

In my current project, my base prefab VFXgraph works great. I cloned that prefab 12 times in my scene, and it works great. I then parented the 12 clones to a parent gameobject to make a "pod". When I duplicate the pod, the editor becomes completely unusable. Since the graph is in preview, I can barely even get it to respond to the Play button.

So I remove the 2nd pod, and instead add one clone at a time on top of the original 12, I find the performance cliff happens about clone 15.

I'm wondering if there's a better approach than trial and error to have figured out 12 was my budget given the performance cost of my prefab VFXgraph.

I'm also wondering why I observe a "cliff" in performance rather than a gradual "slope" as I add more clones.

I would expect that performance gets worse with each additional clone, but I observe performance to work fine before the limit and drastically worse after the limit.