so a common claim I see made is that arch is up to date than Debian but harder to maintain and easier to break. Is there a good sort of middle ground distro between the reliability of Debian and the up-to-date packages of arch?
Yes somebody did mention Debian Sid, which is Debian unstable. Which is maybe even more up to date (I still don't consider it rolling release, because there will be a package freeze, if not multiple).