I go through stages where I break a lot of spokes on the rear wheel, 32 spoke, 26" rim.
My mtn bike has rim brakes, so one theory is when the rim metal thickness is reduced to a certain point, the wheel starts to go out of true more often, then some spokes have too little tension, others perhaps too much.
Recently, I got a Park spoke tension meter, and I now regularly check each spoke for tension every 6 weeks, some do need to be adjusted, the tension can change over time. It seems too little tension causes the most breakage.
I'm not so heavy <160, but the bike carries a lot; 50-65 lbs total for commuting.
My rims seem to last 2 years on average (12K to 15K miles), these are a store bought wheels, not hand made. Hand made 36 spoke will be my next experiment.