I don't think this is generally true. Especially on mediums where sequentially writing large blocks is faster than random writes, you get much better performan

I don't think this is generally true. Especially on mediums where sequentially writing large blocks is faster than random writes, you get much better performance to use a log-structured datastructure and put anything new/any changes at the end. Due to the design of modern SSD's, 'write in place' is pretty much an illusion.