You will get MUCH fewer stale shares on Ethermine if you use the ssl stratum on the server closest to you e.g.
-epool stratum+ssl://eu1.ethermine.org:5555
Didn't realize this was a thing. Been mining to non-SSL server for a year now..
Is this specific to Ethermine or does this also apply to other pools like Nanopool?
well its been awhile since i mined eth but i guess ssl for all claymore products has been a thing since the api port hack thing a while back.