Struggling with N+1 query issue impacting Laravel Eloquent performance on complex relationships

hey everyone,

we've been seeing some pretty gnarly slowdowns in our 'Laravel Quick Fix & Consultation' application lately, especially when fetching data with complex relationships. it's really hitting us hard on pages displaying lists of resources that have many related models, and the user experience is suffering big time.

i'm pretty sure it's N+1 query problems, specifically with deeply nested relationships and potentially polymorphic relations. standard eager loading (with()) isn't fully solving it, or i'm misapplying it in complex scenarios. we've tried the usual suspects:

• implemented with() for direct relations.
• used load() after initial queries for conditional loading.
• explored custom scopes for some basic query optimization.

but the problem persists, especially when we have something like a Project that has Tasks, and each Task has a User, and then Comments, which could be polymorphic to both Task and Project. here's a simplified example of what might be happening:

// Project Model
class Project extends Model {
    public function tasks() { return $this->hasMany(Task::class); }
    public function comments() { return $this->morphMany(Comment::class, 'commentable'); }
}

// Task Model
class Task extends Model {
    public function project() { return $this->belongsTo(Project::class); }
    public function user() { return $this->belongsTo(User::class); }
    public function comments() { return $this->morphMany(Comment::class, 'commentable'); }
}

// Example Query causing issues
$projects = Project::with('tasks.user', 'comments')->get();
foreach ($projects as $project) {
    echo $project->name;
    foreach ($project->tasks as $task) {
        echo $task->title . ' assigned to ' . $task->user->name; // N+1 on user if not eager loaded
        foreach ($task->comments as $comment) {
            echo $comment->body; // N+1 on comments if not eager loaded, especially if morphic
        }
    }
    foreach ($project->comments as $comment) {
        echo $comment->body; // N+1 on project comments if not eager loaded
    }
}

// Mock Debugbar Output (simplified)
// SELECT * FROM projects; // 1 query
// SELECT * FROM tasks WHERE project_id IN (1,2,3...); // 1 query
// SELECT * FROM users WHERE id IN (10,11,12...); // 1 query
// SELECT * FROM comments WHERE commentable_id = 1 AND commentable_type = 'App\\Models\\Project'; // N queries for projects
// SELECT * FROM comments WHERE commentable_id = 101 AND commentable_type = 'App\\Models\\Task'; // M queries for tasks
// ... and so on, ballooning the query count significantly.

i'm really seeking advanced strategies or patterns for optimizing Laravel Eloquent performance in these deeply nested, potentially polymorphic N+1 scenarios. are there specific techniques for reducing the query count beyond basic eager loading, or ways to debug these complex query patterns more effectively? perhaps some lesser-known Eloquent features or database-level tricks?

eagerly awaiting expert advice to tackle this.