I was attracted to Dean Markley "Blue Steels" in the 90's mostly cause packaging and marketing. They are just average strings, regular breakage and not great at retaining tuning. I didn't know, and didn't care so I used them for nearly 20 years.
Then I discovered the coated elixirs, used them for a few years, saved a ton of money as instead of monthly changes it was every 6 months. Hell I have one guitar that I rarely play still sporting elixirs from 7 years ago, just took out of case, sounds and feels like new strings still.
however, got tired of the plastic shavings build up in my floyd rose and maybe just me but I can hear "plastic" in my tone.... sounds weird but I notice it compared to non-coated, so decided to return to non-coated. Elixirs are very good strings though.
After that, I tried a few brands, but stuck with NYXL for the last 5 years. They are quite durable and I get about 3 months out of them playing 2-3 hours a day, once locked they never go out of tune, not a single broken string (I also use big bends nut sauce for lube) and I'm extremely expressive with my Trem bar on the floyds. I'm standard tuning 09-46, use EMG 81/81, 81/60 and 81/85 pickups and Dunlop Tortex 60mm picks.