The integration with OS reinstall works very well, and is pretty seamless from the user's perspective. I used to do two backups-- a local TM backup and a separate cloud backup, but I found it was actually easier to just use Automator to up mount my TM volume once a day, image it, and send that up to the cloud. When my TM volume failed last year, I just pulled the latest image and put it on a replacement drive, and I was back up and running.
TM has had a few problems, but by and large it is one of the quiet successes in OS X, and probably my favorite feature if the OS. Why Microsoft hasn't put something like it in Windows is baffling to me.
I found that just running an Automator script for the "new disk image from selection" command on the root of the drive worked perfectly-- set an iCal event to run that script once a day, and you're done.
Be sure to test this to make sure it restores, but in my case it works flawlessly.
TM has had a few problems, but by and large it is one of the quiet successes in OS X, and probably my favorite feature if the OS. Why Microsoft hasn't put something like it in Windows is baffling to me.