WP_Query pagination performance degradation on high offset values

When managing large datasets in WordPress, WP_Query utilizes offset-based pagination via the posts_per_page and paged parameters. While this is the standard approach for paginated content, database performance typically declines as the offset increases because the engine must scan through all preceding rows before returning the requested subset.

To mitigate overhead, developers often implement no_found_rows => true to skip the total count calculation and use fields => 'ids' to reduce memory consumption. However, these optimizations do not address the underlying cost of the LIMIT offset, count SQL operation on tables with millions of records.

Technical Constraints

• PHP max_execution_time and MySQL timeouts act as the primary safeguards against hanging queries.
• Standard WP_Query arguments do not provide a native mechanism for keyset pagination (seek method).

What is the recommended strategy for maintaining constant-time query performance in WP_Query as the page number increases? Is there a documented way to implement cursor-based pagination within the core API to avoid high-offset latency?