Interesting reading. The stripper should do bugger all 99% of the time. The other 1% is to flick the 'very occasional' sticky link out or more commonly
rope if a R2C (auto rope to chain)
winch. If you are relying on the stripper to peel the chain off the
gypsy all the time the chances are very high you have a gypsy to chain mismatch or some other issue, possibly piling to high in your locker action, a common cause. The stripper on a all chain
winch should be looked at as only a back-up rather than a must have. A all chain winch should run perfectly fine 99.9% of the time even with no stripper fitted.
With a R2C winch a stripper is important as it will often be used to flick the warp out especially if the rodes being retrieved under a big load. The rope will go right into the gypsy on occasions like than and often needs some encouragement to come out.
So if you have a munted and mangled stripper it usually indicates an issue. Mind you many strippers are pretty lightweight so a one-off freak Oppsie could munt it, but that isn't overly common.
So you shouldn't have to rely on your stripper nor should it be munted. If either of those are ongoing issues you have it does indicate you have other issues.
The stripper could be one that goes into the gypsy and doesn't have a band around the gypsy
core or it maybe one that does, depends on who made it really. All strippers should go in pretty close to but not quite touching the gypsy
core. Some that have the bands often do touch but that's OK and nothing to worry about. With the non-banded ones it is common to see them pushed to one side of the gypsy, just get a big screwdriver and bend it more into the middle. If it sits to far off to one side on a R2C winch it does leave a gap the rope could try to sneak past and as it thinks it can but actually can't the word cluster f**k would explain the likely outcome of it trying. Sometimes that can damage the rope so if you get that give the rope a quick check to make sure it hasn't been compromised.
But rest assured the manufacturers have realised that some of their earlier strippers were limp verging on hopeless so they are upgrading them as new models come out, a few have done some retro fitting also.