only wire rope and chain I use is winch cable on the bucket truck, and to tie down the excavator or mini skideah, not a fan of chain or wire rope at all,
my chipper winch has synthetic rope, for many reasons, the truck winch would but I didn't have any left over when I replaced the cable on it last time (and I had about 100ft of literally brand new cable for it from an old project)
pretty much if its something coming in contact with wood, or my hands, synthetic 100%, although my crane slings are probably soon to be switched to chain but not 100% sure I wanna spend the money on that when round slings are $20