afaik when you stalking to maximize luck of your mined block to get accepted on network, your wallet need to connected to many nodes/peers. for example my wallet are connected to 13 - 15 peers. of course your wallet balance also into calculation, the bigger your balance meaning more "mining" power.
from where you got those peers? my wallet has a very connection and i couldnt find more nods to add there
about the stake performance, i noticed heavily reduced rewards since 2 days ago, it seems more and more wallets are coming up for stake lately