createjs.Ticker.framerate does NOTHING

As I suspected, this is a terrible reason to want to change the frame rate.

First, you can't predict what kind of hardware your end users will be running on. Could be something old and slow or something new and blazing fast. You have no way of knowing whether this particle effect will slow things down or not.

Second, if your particle effect is slowing down the frame rate on what I'll assume is midrange hardware, then you need to fix that. Scale it down or implement it more efficiently. CreateJS is perfectly capable of rendering very complex particle system at a high frame rate.

https://createjs.com/demos/easeljs/Cache.html

Third, if you can't make the particle effect perform better, then just set your frame rate to the best it can manage on your test hardware without slowdown. It almost sounds like you're intentionally using the particle effect slowdown as a frame rate limiter, which if true would be a very, VERY bad idea.