Check out IDLES if you're not already familiar.
Yeah, definitely. It's hard to find and I guess I forgot the actual name, which is "anti deadzones." On the game's info page, hit the controller icon on the right (left of the gear), then Edit Layout. Move to the Joysticks section, and hit the gear icon to the right of "[Left/Right] Joystick Behavior." Under Dead Zones, set Deadzone Type to Custom. A bit further down, hit the toggle for Show Advanced Deadzone Options, and now you can finally see Anti-Deadzone and Anti-Deadzone Buffer, which I set to 10 and 15 respectively. I'm sure I could've tinkered more but that felt good enough for me.
I had a hard time getting into DS2 for a variety of reasons, but I did play all the way through on the deck. Being able to set negative deadzones to fix DS2's horrible defaults went a long way toward making it more playable for me. Kinda wish I'd found that mod, but I wasn't too put off by the visuals.