Yes the safe harbor helps when you have a significant increase in income. You could win the lottery and still not have a penalty or owe tax until April as long as you met the prior year safe harbor.
When your income is then steady from year to year you would more likely benefit from paying 90% of current year tax (estimated) rather than 110% of prior year and it's time to just set up quarterly estimated tax payments. you can always adjust the quarterly ES down later in the year if your estimates come in lower, but can't increase them later in the year to make up for earlier quarters. To the extent you can increase withholding that will reduce the ES due if needed. When you do your 2025 filing you can adjust the 2026 estimates and optimize the ES vouchers under Other Tax Situations / Form W4 and Estimated Taxes section.
Form 2210 is helpful to review, lines 1-9 have the safe harbor calc. It's not normally filed unless you opt for one of the exceptions (e.g. AI method) and won't appear in the forms list by default on TT desktop but if you double click thru line 38 on 1040 and again on the worksheet it will show 2210.
