Potholes and cracks are asphalt's warning shots. Answer them properly and the pavement lives; ignore them and water finishes the job.
A shovel of cold-mix in a wet hole is gone by spring - the freeze-thaw pump that made the pothole is still running. A real repair cuts back to sound pavement, addresses the base and water below, and fills with compacted hot mix. It costs more than a bag of cold patch and less than doing it every year forever.
Crack filling is the highest-return maintenance in paving: hot rubber in a routed crack keeps water out of the base, which is where every pavement death actually begins.
Cold-mix in wet holes with the drainage unfixed - the standard failure loop. Cut-and-hot-patch with the water addressed breaks it.
As they appear, seasonally at worst. A quarter-inch crack drinks gallons per storm straight into your base.
Alligatoring means base failure below - full-depth patching fixes it for real. Surface treatments over it are money down the crack, literally.