For ZHA users, the usual recommendation is to directly bind remotes to lamps which enabled smooth dimming.
#zigbee2mqtt allows sending the brightness_move command to zigbee lights, which allows to start/stop very smooth dimming with minimal traffic on the mesh.
Because Homeassistant has no sensible way to use this, I created a crazy #nodered flow that directly works with zigbee2mqtt to make my remotes work they way they should on light groups.