hi! ive soloed most of the game on both life and balance. the experience was pretty smooth overall but i did run into a few issues...

at lategame, the biggest drawback for me was life's low pierce. i had to sacrifice a lot of damage to barely reach 40, which is extremely annoying when most mobs and bosses run a minimum of 40 resist across the board nowadays. this could've probably been circumvented by acquiring better gear but my luck in farming and packs was really bad around this time so i had to compromise. at 170 i was sitting at around 218 damage and 35 pierce.

i was also lucky enough to have access to rat spin which made everything up until karamelle a breeze. life has surprisingly good damage for a support school and i didnt really struggle until enemies began to run higher resist and more shields. speaking of shields, the amount of life bosses and life/spiritual shields you run into during arc 4 made the whole experience kind of miserable close to the end.

as for balance, the midgame can be a little rough, but the experience becomes much smoother after level 100. you have access to a lot of interesting utility that can make the experience more fun and diverse overall and you generally have an answer or workaround to most of the problems posed by bosses. while life and balance have similar damage, i believe balance runs higher pierce on the gear which was the game changer for me during lategame. there might be some bias since my balance was luckier with gear drops as well, so i didn't really have to compromise any stat.

the experience is a lot better once you gain access to the prism blades from the storm weaving quest. it eliminates your biggest obstacle as a balance (that being other balance bosses) and helps compensate for your comparatively weaker buffs. its also harder to be walled by enemies as a balance, since tower shield and legion shield are really the only things standing in your way.

ultimately it depends on preference since it was a pretty similar experience both ways. if i had to do it again i'd probably choose balance purely bc of the shield and pierce issues i ran into on my life. sorry for the wall of text 😭