I'm surprised as I've always used nothing but Elixir strings, had no problem at all except one set off E-bay which were probably fake. I do know a guy though who buys Elixir from the same place as I do, breaks strings very regularly, reason being as I and most others see, he's strums 95 % in opwn chord tuning, and is incredubly rough on his strings, really lays n to them far too hard. As you said you do a lot of strumming, could you be doing the same? I'm probably tempting fate but I've never broken a string