qeustion about my hardware and H/s

[mastercracker]

Basically I have three words I usually use, with a few characters before and after, including special characters, or not. The first letter of the three words may be capitalized.

If you suspect only a couple of characters, I think that your masks are too long and not well targeted. It makes sense to use -i for words with the mask after it like lockoff?a?a?a?a since it's going to eventually try:
lockoff?a
lockoff?a?a
lockoff?a?a?a
...
but if you use it with masks before the word like ?a?a?a?alockoff, it will do:
?a
?a?a
?a?a?a
?a?a?a?a
?a?a?a?a?l
...
So your word will only be fully present with 4 characters before. If your password has 3 characters before, it won't be covered. What you have to do is write them individually in your .hcmask file:
?alockoff
?a?alockoff
?a?a?alockoff
If you suspect that you added characters both before and after, you can use these in your .hcmask for example:
?alockoff?a?a?a?a
?a?alockoff?a?a?a?a
...
then it would make sense using -i because you will eventually cover everything.