Great discussions going on here, guys - this honestly became a pretty darn cool thread thanks to your participations!!
@GrowthCurve Toppers actually arent that uncommon/nuanced as one might think. Indeed, before beginning to actually 'see' how many people indicate toppers for their builds, I'd never even heard of/catered to the idea. But what's great about this concept is that a 'topper,' or 'upper sleeve,' if you will, makes the portion of the wick that is exposed to the wire fatter than the rest of the wick.
IME, this A.) allows the wick to hold more juice for vaporization than the wick hole's diameter might have otherwise allowed, while B.) keeping the 'main' body of the wick slimmer so as to facilitate rapid wicking (in other words you can get a 'fat wick' vape off of an otherwise thin wick, finally!) and C.) if I'm using some delicate mesh, like #200sf, which can be prone to developing holes in it from exposure to a hot coil over time, I can wrap the upper portion of it in something like #300 which protects the more fragile mesh underneath. Thats actually exactly the type of build I run in my Nextiny - a 13mm H x 40mm W piece of #200sf with a "topper" of 5mm H x 10mm W #300 mesh. Works like a DREAM and is perfect for the Collector's Edition of the Nextiny which has the option of 4-way airflow but this can rapidly remove all the vapable (new word FTW
) liquid from the coil and result in a mouthful of metal. With a really properly wicking setup, though, the 4-way airflow all of a sudden becomes usable!
Anyway, I highly suggest givin' it a shot. It's like getting the benefits of two grades of mesh in one wick
this thing!! And it took me, like two minutes to build. And i did NOT have to drill out the titanium airhole!! 
