In case it helps, here at my sysctl and applicable nginx config values

Sysctl
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries = 2
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65535
net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout = 3
net.core.rmem_max = 16777216
net.core.wmem_max = 16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 16777216 16777216 16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 16777216 16777216 16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_max_tw_buckets = 16777216
net.ipv4.tcp_tw_reuse = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog = 262144
net.core.somaxconn = 262144
net.core.netdev_max_backlog = 15000
net.core.netdev_budget = 8196
net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range = 1024 65535
net.ipv4.ip_nonlocal_bind = 1

Applicable nginx configuration
user www-data;
worker_processes 20;
worker_rlimit_nofile 500000;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
use epoll;
multi_accept off;
accept_mutex off;
worker_connections 65536;
}