Stepper wear? Strong nema17s?

Does such a thing exist as stepper wear?
My X-axis on highly modified Prusa V1 started skipping randomly all of sudden, months without issues, same speeds as before, and all of sudden skips. Not initially, usually a bit into the print.
Yesterday again, without setting changes, printed fine for like 8hours, and then constant skipping without a reason.

So do steppers or stepper drives "wear" out quickly in real life? I know over time the magnets can get weaker, but this is quite quick.

This machine has nothing but been a pain in the ass for more than a year. I just want to confirm steppers don't wear out this quickly before trashing this machine.

Oh yeah, and what is the strongest option for Nema17 mount option? What stepper drivers to use?

I don't know whether they wear out as such but they certainly seem to be very fragile.
I have had two faulty A4988 stepper drivers over the last couple of months - one a newer one from G3D with 2 pots.
I have found you need to carry lots of spares so you can swap out parts: spare Arduino, spare Ramps, spare steppers, spare extruder, plus a load of other bits.

Drivers seems to be OK, but then again, that could be the ultimate cause ... Well i just ordered some TB6560s to replace. Same price as A4988/Stepsticks pretty much, but higher current and probably easier to give higher voltage.
Also i purchased 71oz-in Nema 17s in the hopes this damn skipping finally ends, and going to throw out the old X axis stepper motor, just in case it's the cause.

Yea i carry A LOT of spare parts too, infact, so much that at one point i was thinking of opening a webshop, but time is such a limited resource!

ok took out the stepper - Bearings got to be broken on this one!
From shaft i can barely rotate it by hand.

after disassembling it, the bearings are fine. well, not just fine, but they are very good. The magnetic field is just so damn strong in this one compared to Wantai 42BYGHW609 (pretty much the same as 809)