Activator performance improvement

Shouldn't close the previous PR early. Turns out I did not have to change much of my design.

Pinging previous trackers
@pranavkm
@halter73 
@rynowak
@ipjohnson
@yishaigalatzer 
Activator is being perf tested. I added the feature as requested by @yishaigalatzer. My understanding is that we want the feature to be out to be in time for release.