Lot's of opinions here, and ya know what they say about those.. LOL
There is no "best" stripper. There are lots of good ones. Some brands of finishes will strip easier with the same brand fo stripper. I heard for years from MANY sources that SC Johnson's finishes were built so that you HAD to use their stripper to remove them. I have found this to be true to a point.. Their Pro Strip is a very good stripper, but it is pricey, and rough on the lungs. The best I have used so far is Spartan's Endura Strip. It is better than the Emulsifier Plus, and works at weaker dilutions. It is designed to remove thier laminator system, which is polyurethane enhanced. Polys are the toughest to remove.. There are some finishes that are just a bear to strip. You will find that complete, technique (a chemially resistand sealer by SC Johnson), on'n on, betco best and hybrid 25, and trilinc can all be tougher. Sometimes you just have to grin and bear it..
Be careful about using hot water. Hot water will evaporate quicker and leave you with goo on the floor. Hot water will also cause the solvents in stripper to flash of in some cases. Once that happens, the stripper has lost one of the components that strips! If you find that you are making goo, try diluting the stripper a little more. You HAVE to have the appropriate ratio for the stripper to work in many cases, more is not always better. If the finish is peeling up, or coming up in sheets, you can try mixing the stripper stronger, and/or use hotter water IF the stripper will allow. Sometimes you can get it hotter, but you have to apply it to smaller sections to get it scrubbed before it evaporates. Sometimes you just have a nasty sealer that will have to be scrapped off.. sad, but true.
Using a good aggressive brush will help too. It will not gum up with goo, and you can easily rinse it out if it does. There are three different basic PADS for stripping: brown (least aggressive), thick black (more aggressive but clogs easily), and the thin black high-pro (most aggressive and won't clog as badly, and can be rinsed out.) Sometimes it is a good idea to have more than one type of stripper on hand as one may work better than another. The best I have used are: Spartan's endura strip and emulsifier plus, Johnson's pro strip (I understand fastrip is even better), Pioneer Eclipse formula X. I have used lots of others, but they did not work as well as these.
Every once in a while you just smooch-the-pooch on a VCT job, but the above will help elminate a lot of them.