IMO, what I liked best about the old kiss carts is how fast they heated up because it allowed more of the contents to be vaporized at once, whereas I have experienced a much harder time getting fuller hits on the new black ceramic due to the longer heat up time...(it seems as though the extra few seconds is more likely to push the concentrate off the wick and into the bottom of the dish ).
Everybody's got personal preferences, but there's also a bit of a learning factor.
With the white ceramic wicks, they didn't seem to absorb too much. When you tapped the button, the concentrate kind of would melt to the wire and wick but not absorb into it. Half the hit could slide off and into the cup if I had loaded too much. And with each tap when melting- some wisps of vapor inevitably emanate from the wick.
With the black wick, I place the concentrate on the wick- even a little bit more than I could with the white wick- and tap the button. When I do this, it actually melts into the wick quite a bit. I believe the porosity of the black wick means that more concentrate actually gets into contact with the wire at once, and feeds into the wire more consistently than with the white wire. That keeps the overall temperature of the wire cooler and results in more linear vapor production. And it means that once I properly 'fed' the ceramic, I can then press the button for quite a long time with great flavor. And get the whole hit, instead of it sliding off into the cup.
This is just my own opinion, but in the interests of full disclosure I have to admit that I have not purchased any KISS carts manufactured in the last 5-6 months. Since acquiring the Nibbler GN, and since I don't have an Okeanos, I have converted to using the Globes exclusively and have still not broken a single coil (neither of my original two Nichrome nor any of the six Ti coils i bought when they originally came out) in some time.
But most of the time, I use the Hercules, anyways.
I have major leaks everytime I go for huge 10-20sec button firing
How long are you camping out in between the monster hits? The big hits get the chambers and your oil hotter than littler hits, and people are generally more motivated to take big hits when they have the Nibbler XL attached.
If you are taking big hits and getting the thing really hot and trapping the heat inside the water and glass insulatingness of the Nibbler then you are gonna want to make sure to do cool-down draws in between your hits and preferably immediately after you exhale your vapor. That cool down hit immediately after does wonders for keeping the oil in the top chamber while at it's hottest. Never giving it the opportunity for gravity to win and let it seep out the air inlet holes.
That's what they are, in the bottom of the upper chamber. They're air inlet holes, and if the Herc is warm, they are designed to have air going into them. If you forget to do that, oil is going to go out of them.