My own best practise is to do substantial developments in DEV and then use DT into UAT, together with a document that describes all the manual bits needed. Once that works I know I have rehearsed and can with confidence do the same into PROD.
If it is a very small change and there is only one administrator and the timescale is short, then I will use T2L. First into UAT and then into prod. However since it is currently impossible to reliably lock down the design and admin tools, I will personally only use T2L for a very short (less than 1 day elaspe) modifications. It's just too easy for a category to reappear, a query to get deleted and so on.
There is an ER for such a locking tool to be provided and if that were available I'd be much keener on T2L.
Once you get used to DT's little foibles it is reasonably easy to use and has the advantaged that you can present to a client a complete list of mods that are going to be made. With most of our clients this is essential - just having a bit of magic that syncs up sounds good, but in practise is way too dangerous, in my very humble opinion.