This Gearset article describes some very logical phases for performing a large deployment:
https://docs.gearset.com/metadata-deployment-guides/splitting-a-complex-deployment-into-stages

It would be nice if there were built-in comparisons to show each subset of metadata.

For example if you were on phase 1 of the deployment you could filter your comparison to just "Data Tier" and Gearset would pre-filter the relevant metadata.