A new version of the miner is available; I've updated the download link on the first post, or you can get it here:
For switching to a backup pool support: just using the -f flag to set priorities as described in the FAQ works just fine for me. I don't particularly want to do something elaborate unless there's a convincing case. If people can't figure out how to use the -f flag then that's actually a documentation bug and I should fix that

Thank you for the Update!
Regarding the -f support, I hope I did understand right that for using phoenix miner I have to use the AGGRESSION= setting instead. But if I do so, if a miner with a high aggression (like 13 or 14) fails because the pool goes down, and my backup miner has aggression <10, that one goes nowhere near 100% hashing power when the "master miner" stops working.
Any ideas? (except switching to opencl miner instead of phoenix

)