I've used wire for 25+years, including for slings and winches. I'll never look back. I've dealt with a local wire rope manufacturer and wanted a new hook spliced onto my syn and while they hadn't dealt with splicing it previously theywere willing to do it once they had all trained to do it. Their issue was that they didn't have a sample or stock to use so I just gave them mine and the rep from the company came out and we all (they let me sit in) got to lean the ropes (sorry).
I clean mine after each trip in the washing machine even including some soap (just use sunlight flakes or flake sunlight bar into it) or in the current rain I keep an eye on it and when it dries out I'll service the winch and again wash the rope while it's off.

