The decision for a strokeer motor to me is where you're looking for broad mid range and a target horsepower, if you want say right around 500 hp with a sub 6000 rpm peak, it's very easy to achieve. The essence is you're using moderate piston speed through the mid range (where you're not over stressing the block) with a goal of not spinning it up to high (because you don't have to).
A 4.25 arm spinning 6000 rpm has the same piston speed and about the same airflow as a 340 spinning 7700 rpm. the way I build em with say 270-ish cfm heads Both can easily make over 500 hp....but which one would be a better 'real world' better driver? And which one gets to use up 500hp worth of head flow (or closest to it) more often in real dual purpose driving? Which one can pull away and roll-on in any gear at any throttle position?
strokers spinning way up high is like winding a car out past it's power peak, the motor still gains RPM....but it's out of the sweet spot....with a long stroke and the right cam the sweet spot is so broad you don't really have an urge to wind it up tight. BTW I consider durable to go at least 30-40K miles of whatever I want to throw at them, that's a lot of miles for a "toy" and they'll no doubt go further, but I'm gonna be bored by then and want to swap in something else by then.
Another key point, with 4+ " small block stroker torque motors I actually deliberately slightly undercam the motor so as the power naturally falls off right around 5800 or so, after torque peaks the VE (pumping efficiency and rpm gain per sec) naturally starts to fall off as well, so I kind of build-in my rev limiter so to speak.
