In the 360 days I used to make my own “paddle” controllers and wrote a few tutorials on it. As others have said once you get used to paddles you miss them. Especially in FPS and games where you have to use the right thumbstick and press buttons at the same time.
When I went to PC I used the elite Series 1 and then went to the Series 2 when they came out. I gifted the 1 to a friend and he loved it. His son damaged it so he bought the series 2 at the end of 2020. He eventually had a thumbstick issue and just recently bought a Core to replace it. On my S2 I had an issue with my LB button not working and the trigger stop cap coming off on one slider at around the 10 month mark. I unfortunately didn’t realize MS extended the warranty to 1yr and still thought it was 90 days. I bought the parts to repair the LB button and left the controller sitting . I then went to a SCUF PS4 controller, back to xbox controller with the collective minds attachment but missed the weight of the elites. I decided to buy another S2 and had an issue with the thumbstick while it was under warranty. I got a replacement from MS exactly 1 year ago and have had zero issues with it.
Even with the issues I still prefer the elite over other options.
I just recently repaired my original S2 and replaced both LB and RB buttons just so they were the same.