For me, the "borking" issue is largely resolved by running Btrfs. Just make a snapshot shortly before updating, and then I can revert to it if needed.
Granted Btrfs sounds great though, i've not used that. It would certainly help.
I just take occasional snapshots before I do things that I'm concerned may be catastrophic. But it definitely won't catch everything. It helps that I run Arch, and I update packages once a day, which only leaves me with under 40 (small) packages usually. So a quick cursory glance at which ones are updating usually tells me what to be cautious of. Display driver update, kernel update, etc.
If I'm not sure what went wrong, but I at least have a working snapshot, then I can get done what I need to get done, and then go back to troubleshooting. Rather than just having a broken system regardless.