I see posts are generally getting less than before Hard Fork 25.

It's because the hard fork has changed curation incentives.

Prior to the fork, it was worth piling into a post that was under $15 to try to get it to over $15, because of the quasi-exponential returns - bumping the total return up also increased your curation return.

With linear, voting on an existing big payout post just dilutes what you get because your weight is a small part of the total.

As you say, the best returns for curators now are voting for comments if you can give a vote above dust. If you can't give a vote above dust, then the best strategy is voting for a post with a small positive return but doesn't have many votes (so that your weight counts for more).