Thanks ocminer, that worked.
So I've tried on two different wallets, local and vps with nothing but -connect=94.22.184.4 in the conf. both get up to 2000 and stay there synced to 2k
**EDIT** one of them went up to 2010Is there an argument like do
notaddnode=94.22.184.4?

that node is the first thing the wallet connects to, no matter what's on the conf. and it won't go past 2010
Launch the daemon with
. /vertex -connect=88.88.88.88
And it will only connect there