Hmm while testing as I wanted all things to be "equal" once I set the diff offered on Kano pool to 1000 (the same that solo pool is offering) the Ants2 is way more happy and hash rate has climbed back up  and not getting as many hw errors either.. So no problem with DE node or anything it seems as far as I am considered..

Weird though that ant s2s dont seem to like the 1042 default which is being offered if I left the worker diff setting to 0 and let it auto adjust.. (if anyone knows of a better setting than 1000 please do tell) but yeah, that seemed to do the trick to get it to perform the same as in solo pool..