Recommended permissions not enough

I have a new vps on a LEMP stack. I tried to update to 4.6 and failed due file permissions. So I set as I had researched to be recommended
find /var/www/html -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /var/www/html -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
which failed a bit further writing a file. So in the end it was 777 all round.

But I know how insecure that is. So what settings will avoid me having to chop and change my permissions every time I have an update?