Originally Posted by waterrockets

You're getting truing and tension mixed up. You true visually. You can check tension consistency by plucking.

For wheel life, even spoke tension is much much more important than how true or round the wheel is. A wheelbuilder finds a balance that yields acceptable tension consistency, roundness, and trueness. The wheels I build are all w/in 0.25mm true/round/dish, and usually less than 5% tension variation. They are durable wheels.

If you focus on true and round, but end up with > 10% tension variation, some spokes will be slack over bumps, and will fatigue at the bend. These will break prematurely.