How do I measure the SQL Database responsiveness

I am load testing my web app which is Azure App Server + Azure SQL Database. I am looking at the the Azure data dashboard metrics as we load test it and most measures (DTU percentage, CPU percentage, etc.) average around 0.2% to 0.5% spiking to 2% at times. On the query performance insight the worst one is 1.080 seconds, one at 0.860 seconds, and the rest under 0.5 seconds. All of my web pages of interest have either 1 or 2 queries although Entity Frameworks can break 1 query into several. Performance recommendations and Automatic tuning have no suggestions. I'm 99.9% confident that I am indexing everything I should. So here are my questions: 1. What else should I measure? The biggie I think is how long does a query wait to be executed. If a query is 0.0001 seconds to run, but it comes after the 1 second query, then it's 1.0001 before it returns. Is this worth looking at? And if so, where/how do I find this? 2. I think my queries are reduced to what I truly need. The ones that take time are a model that has 4 collections that are populated via a join table. And I need those 4 collections (I do not read other collections in the model I don't need). Is there anything I can do to speed up the the two over 0.5 second queries? When I've looked at it in the past a simple read it in query is no faster being in a stored procedure (and doing that then loses the Entity Framework advantages). Is there anything I should look at doing to speed up queries, outside of the query itself? I have fine-tuned the queries already, so I think I'm now in the "it is what it is" situation.