I'm sincerely sorry to hear that you are disappointed in your results. Many users have seen significant increases in their earnings on Blaze and other auto-exchange pools with the Build Larger Shares feature enabled. For me personally, it has decreased my payout time on Blaze by a day.

That is why I invest a bit of development time in including pools that do not auto-exchange such as Icemining.ca and Quantum Mining Pool in Hash Auger even though most users prefer the convenience of auto-exchanging.  Including support for the dedicated coin ports that more and more of these pools are using took some time as the feature is not currently supported by the Yiimp API.  Yet, this provided Hash Auger users with greater flexibility.  If you just wanted to mine just Raven, you could create a new wallet in HA with your Raven wallet address and then enable a few pools that mine Raven and do not auto-exchange.  The software  will then compare prices and switch Raven mining to whichever pool has the best estimate.  Similarly, if you wanted to mine Raven and a few other specific coins without auto-exchanging, the software can switch among just those coins whether they are on the same pool or different pools.  I've spent a lot of development time trying to make mining individual coins as seamless as auto-exchanging.

In fact, you can even mix the two types of mining in Hash Auger.  For example, add a Raven wallet and enable a couple of pools that do not auto-exchange and then keep Blaze or another auto-exchange pool enabled. The software will switch among the work based on current estimates.  However, given the volatility of Raven prices on some auto-exchange pools, you may want to disable x16r on the auto-exchange pool if you try this approach.

To give a quick update on this, BlockMasters just updated their pool and according to the author of the post about their estimate accuracy, they are now lower than most other pools. It will be interesting to watch how their estimates compare with those of other pools over time.

Another suggestion is that if you are using Z-Enemy miner as the preferred miner for any of the algorithms it supports, you may want to follow the developer's recommendations for intensity settings found here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3378390.0  Some of the miner's default settings are not the recommended values.  If you change the intensity settings
for a preferred miner, you may want to consider locking that miner if you are using the Change Preferred Miners Automatically advanced configuration setting.

In regards to BlockMasters, you may want to read this post https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4101412.0 to see what others have been saying about their price estimates. I don't agree with everything being said in that thread, but I have found that the actual prices are closer to my expectations than some of the current estimates.

I understand the skepticism and appreciate the fact you have given me the opportunity to respond to your concerns.  Based on my own experience, mining with one bigger pool and one smaller pool helps with earnings as you not as likely to be trapped following each pool's mining patterns. Also, based on my testing with BlazePool and Zergpool, the Build Bigger Shares option helps to get more earnings with coins that are slower to payout, such as Raven.  Of course I cannot guarantee it will work for everyone due to differences in rigs plus luck and the whims of the cryptomarkets. 

But here are my results from the last 24 hours on Blaze with up to 9 GPUs (mostly 1080s - but two aren't mining full time since they turn my home office into an oven during the day): https://imgur.com/a/76E78Mr.  I was paid out yesterday and enabled the Build Larger Shares option on all my rigs about 12 hours ago.  Keep in mind, as I mentioned before, I spread my mining work thin across a few pools to increase my test coverage of the software, so I am not mining solely on Blazepool.

Obviously that is a disappointing result.  Despite the drop in the value of BTC and the hit on earnings caused by the Verge attack, you should be earning more than that.  Some people have questioned the timeliness of the estimates provided by Zergpool (both on this thread and on the pool's thread), so you may want to Use Actual Prices Instead of Estimates for that pool.  Personally, I prefer using the MC Parameter rather than Auto-Switch ports on Zergpool (and BlockMasters) because the estimates are based on each coin's value and not the average for the entire port.

Also, since BlazePool and Zergpool are similarly sized, most users tend to use one or the other. What can happen is that since both pools are popular, many miners will chase the most profitable coin on each pool. When you have both pools enabled, more often than not you will be switching between the ports that have the most miners - which means higher difficulty and lower shares in rewards.  If you stick to either BlazePool or Zergpool and then add a smaller pool such as AHashPool, BlockMasters, HashRefinery or StarPool, you are better positioned to build bigger stakes in coins whose values are rising rather than smaller shares in coins whose values have peaked.

I'm always looking at ways to help users improve their earnings. The latest release, 1.9.2 includes a new pool option to build bigger shares in coins that I would recommend using for either BlazePool or Zergpool.  The situation is that some of the more popular algorithms (Neoscrypt, x16, Phi for example) on these pools have so many miners that if you just mine these ports when the prices are high, you usually end up with a really small share in the next block reward - fractions of a percent. While still profitable, you could be earning a little more by investing some more mining time in these coins.  This new feature tells the software to delay switching work based on price when it estimates that your current stake in the next block for the current algorithm is very low.   It can definitely help your earnings on bigger pools even if you may switch work a little less frequently.

To follow-up, I switched more of my rigs to mine on Zergpool earlier today, both with the auto-switch ports as well as individual coins using the MC parameter.  I haven't run into any errors mining so far, so you may want to try mining on that pool again to see if you connect this time. The attack on Verge last night caused a lot of issues with a lot of pools, so they have had some issues on the their end.  If you see the issue again, please try copy and paste the exact error message so I can better troubleshoot the issue.

Version 1.9.1 fixes the issue with not being able to disable specific algorithms on MiningPoolHub.  After you upgrade, you should be able to disable everything but Equihash on that pool if that is still your intent.

The software still shows a miner panel, but it says something like can't get hashrate and "Accepted 0 of 0 results".  No crashes being reported, the output just stops being updated.  It usually happens on a algorithm switch.  The software doesn't start another process.

Thanks for the info. Just to clarify the issue with the miner processes: the software still shows a miner panel as being active for a card even though the underlying process has exited. Are there any crashes reported for those cards in the error logs/Output panel or does this occur when the software is switching algorithms?  Does the software start another process for the affected cards (so multiple panels are visible for the same card) or is it just that one panel for each card?

Have you tried using a different miner for Neoscrypt. You could manually change the preferred miner to the second fastest miner instead of disabling the algorithm all together. Similarly, you may want to change the preferred miner for lyra2v2 to Nanashi or something newer due to the age of ccminer-phi.  Enough people have had problems with the older variants of ccminer that I am leaning towards disabling them by default
in a future release.

I understand your frustration abut the configuration issues. As a developer it can be a challenge to accomodate different types of users - especially in an area such as this that is so dependent on third-party tools and services. You might want try using just one pool to start out with to determine which algorithms work best on your cards and then maybe enable another pool or two after a couple of days. This will allow you to build bigger shares in new coins even though you will still be switching algorithms based on estimated earnings.  Based on feedback from this thread and elsewhere, a lot of new users prefer Blaze, but I still think smaller pools can offer comparable returns for people who don’t mind slower payouts. However, it can take a while to evaluate their performance due to the slower rate at which they mine new coins.

I've only seen the issue of the software getting detached from a mining process once and that was when Windows Update took control of my desktop to notify of the latest Creator's Update.  If it is happening multiple times, please let me know which mining software and algorithms are being used so I can look into it further.

With six cards, you will definitely see faster payouts by limiting the enabled pools to just a few.  However, you might want to reconsider disabling MPH if only to keep Equihash open as an option. ZCash has been rising in value lately and the pools you currently have enabled don't yet offer it; equihash also tends to run well on the type of memory in 1060s/1070s. For BlockMasters, I personally prefer using the MC Parameter over the auto-switch ports because the pricing reflects individual coins rather than averages for all the coins using each algorithm port.  If you're interested, you can adjust those settings on the pool's Pricing tab.  With that particular pool, I also find the Actual Prices rather than the estimates to be a bit more accurate.

Unfortunately it can take a bit of trial and error to find the optimal settings for the specific collection of GPUs you are using, but the results are often better than trying to apply a one-size fits all strategy.  I'd appreciate it if you could keep me updated on your results; that type of feedback can help me optimize the software for various pools.

Thanks for trying the software.

Whether or not different types of cards will run diffrrent algorithms really just depends on the price estimates for certain algorithms. If an estimated value for one algorithm/coin is significantly higher than the others, it will make up for any differences in which algorithms run best on certain types of hardware. When estimates are closer, you should notice that different algorithms will run on different types of cards. Even when the cards are mining the same algorithm, you still benefit from the error isolation and increased efficiency of running each card in its own miner process.

All the algorithms dominated by ASICs should be disabled by default, so you shouldn’t have to worry about those. But you can always disable an algorithm on a pool if you notice an issue with server performance or how the algoithm is priced. Similarly, you could disable some algorithms on some cards using the Benchmarks tab to prevent software from assugning certain algorithms to those cards regardless of the price estimates. For example, Skein is a very demanding algorithm that may not be ideal for 1060s, but its price often flucuates a bit which could cause it to temporarily be the most profitable algorithm for those cards. Some people may prefer to disable that algorithm on that type of card to focus on algorithms that run well on that card’s memory architecture.

There are some settings you can try adjusting to help maximize your earnings. Since you are using bigger pools like Blaze and MPH, you could increase the Pool Refresh Rate to 15 minutes (or longer if you prefer) to build bigger shares in those pools. Increasing  the the Min Profit Switch to 15% or more tends to work well on my rigs. For MPH and NiceHash, you can use the Pricing tab to include these pools’ additional fees in the price switching calculations. On MPH, I definitely recommend keeping the Include Auto-Switch ports setting off.

If you feel that price estimates for certain pools are too high, you could try enabling the Use Actual Prices setting on that pool’s Pricing tab. The estimates provided by some pool’s don’t always do a good job reflecting the volatilty of coin prices in their calculations. I’m glad to hear that you set a Price Spike Limit - are you using the same value for all cards or different values based on their type? I prefer very conserative limits, so I’ll set different values based on the capabilities of each type of card.

One last note, payout speed is obviously a personal preference, but you msy find having that many auto-exchange pools enabled can spread out your work pretty thinly unless you have a lot of GPUs. You may want to try mining a few days on Zpool vs AHashPool and see which one you like more instead of having both enabled in addution to the other three. But if you are patient and going for maximum earnings, there is no harm jn having that many pools enabled.

Keep me posted on your experience and please don’t hesitate with any feedback or questions.

@jmayniac Thank you for trying blazepool.  It is highly recommended that you enter a few algos at least in your bat file to allow for the profit switching to work.  The auto-switch mechanism directs hashes to algos that has low difficulty at the moment to increase the chance for blocks to be mined by the collective power of the pool.  Sticking to a single or a couple algos greatly hinder your ability to earn.  From our own experiment with the many many rigs that we have, auto algo switching always wins out in the longer term (> 72 hrs).  If most rigs in the pool are not doing HSR at the moment, your chance of hitting a block is relatively low consider the world hash amount.  Some algos that are profitable are blake2s, x17, phi, neoscrypt, skein, also depend on your GPU collection too of course.