Don't forget the combination spells for life 2

Battle Cry - Life2+Air2 - 72 mana cost - Tactical - All units in your army get to act immediately

Glyph of Life - Life2+Fire2 - 30 mana cost - Strategic city enchantment - Defending units start with regeneration

Mantle of Oceans - Life2+Water2 - 25 mana cost / 1 upkeep - Strategic Champion enchantment - The mana costs of all tactical spells this unit casts is reduced by 40

Nature's Call - Life2+Earth2 - 30 mana cost - Tactical summon - Summons a pack of wolves, bear, naja or panther to aid you in battle.

Life 1:

Courage - Not worth it for 1 mana upkeep per turn. Better use later in game

Paragon - It's ok, you can base a game around it if you want to

Regeneration - great spell, really helps your champions clear content in act 1

 

Life 2:

Aura of vitality - Great scaling, one of the best spells for fortress unit production

Heal - bad scaling

 

Life 3:

Growth - Great spell

Shrink - Best life spell

Steal soul - I don't use it, but I guess if you have a champ turned useless by injuries...

 

Life 4:

Call to arms - 2nd best life spell, needs to have a scaling cost with what is being produced. 80 mana for a 9-man super-unit is nothing

Wellspring - meh. I guess it's ok if you're trying to steamroll the enemy, otherwise natural life regen in strategic should be enough. There are better spells to use if you're being pressured back, such as regeneration.

 

Life 5:

Crusade - haven't used it

Death Ward - haven't used it

Glory - by the time you can cast it, you shouldn't need to. Should be life4.

Combination spells:

Battle Cry - Great spell for an appropriate cost

Glyph of Life - OK if you have a lot of life shards, otherwise NO.

Mantle of Oceans - This spell is the reason you go water at all

Nature's Call - At 30 mana it is perfectly balanced. The summons basically win a fight for you in the early game, but quickly grow obsolete even if you specialize as summoner

nice initiative DGB
It would help if you put in numbers on the spells though, to help balance and people with less knowledge of each single detail give a proper judgement, or just ask for numbers or something.

Courage: This also grants spell resistance, and is a nice little enchant, not too powerful though but really good to beef up trained units.
- 8 mana, +1 mana upkeep: Gives +3 (+1 per life shard) to hp and spell resistance, only castable as an enchantment in the strategic map.
 Probably could give +4 with no problem, or +5 before shards.

Paragon: I think its a shame this spell is life only, it is really powerful when used correctly or lategame.

Regeneration: I think this should be moved to life 2, or even life 3, due to this spell almost completely removing downtime from questing, and this is a pretty powerful ability worth both manacost and 2 picks in sovereign creation.
 - 15 mana, +1 mana upkeep: Heals 1 (+1 per life shard) hp per turn in tactical combat, and each season to enchanted unit, only castable as an enchantment in the strategic map.
 I think this spell relies a bit too much on lifeshards for effectiveness too, if you find a ton of lifeshards the enchanted hero will have a massive regeneration and beat a lot of monsters easily.

Aura of Vitality: My pet peeve with this enchant is the way it scales with essence, I don't like that. (And it needs to be available to empire, or they should have a similar choice in death magic, IMO).

Heal: This could easily be put into Life: 1, with slightly increased manacost,  but only if you removed regeneration from life1 which I think should be done.
 - 12 mana: Heals 8 (+4 per lifeshard) hitpoints to target unit, only castable in tactical combat.

Growth, Shrink: I really like the flavour of these, but I don't like the details used.
I think growth is fine, but shrink should always give +20% dodge (instead of relying on the target to actually HAVE dodge).

Steal Soul: This could go into Death magic as an "opposite" of the Paragon spell, while paragon is way better at least it would be something
I think I am not the only one having trouble seeing this as a "Life" spell.

Call to Arms: this is a really powerful spell, I think it would benefit the balance if it had a 1 turn cast time, or higher manacost.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Life 1:

Courage - so and so, need a small buff

Paragon - bad design, just dont like it even if can have a purpose, but dont see this being ever balanced

Regeneration - good spell

 

Life 2:

Aura of vitality - decent but not dunno, i dont really need ever early game, its rare to spam troops that soon

Heal - decent spell,  once support mages get more love this can work, right its always best to nuke with other schools or just wear a plate and tank stuff

 

Life 3:

Growth - situational but can be good

Shrink - its good but not needed so often, melees are too strong, you need need to trade, melees are just jack of all trades and can tank and deal dmg at once

Steal soul - bad mechanics plz just remove it

 

Life 4:

Call to arms - very good, cant say if balanced or not

Wellspring - pretty good in general but in practical its not needed, once the game provide strong magic, strong aoe, strong monsters probably will be needed too

 

Life 5:

Crusade - no idee tbh, dont really like it but could be used
Death Ward - good idea but need tuning

Glory - dont like it

 

 

Combination spells:

Battle Cry - interesting idea but doesnt really apply well to metagame, more than the spell, the rest of gameplay need balance to make it useful

Glyph of Life - nice spell potentially

Mantle of Oceans - quite op

Nature's Call - like every summon is useless soon, but being an early game spell its ok (still EVERY summon need more scaling)

I think Blizzard is the most powerful damage spell in the game, because it has a large area of effect, a high damage (8 + 4) and the damage is multiplied with the number of units.

I think Regeneration is too weak without any life shards. The base effect should be increased to 2.

Heal is too weak without any life shards, too. The base effect should be increased to 10 and the shard effect reduced to 3.

The tactical version of Wellspring is too weak without any life shards, too. The base effect should be increased to 15, the shard effect reduced to 5 and the casting time should be reduced to 0.

Mantle of Oceans is too powerful in my opinion. The effect should be reduced to 25 %.

I think can be addressed by one of three ways, first being some kind of magic scaling factor based on magic density chosen at the beginning.  Less magic - less shards - contribution by shards will be more.  Lots of magic, lots of shards - contribution less.  Second, go away from shard scaling to something else say level of the caster or level of the caster, plus techs.  Third, some more spells like Corruption but work for each color.

With regards to life there's absolutely zero damaging types of spells.  Zero summons.  Heal is tied in to shards, which is quite limited.  Doesn't help mid to late game.  Regen helps don't get me wrong, but it's default is less than what trolls get.  Like HF said it only helps in early game.  Either needs to scale better or get some inital buff or both.  Life would really have nothing if it wasn't for grow/shrink.  Just wished they were named something else.  Same goes for Steal Soul.  I'd expect that in a death magic list.  Wellspring - casting time is a downer.  if you're units are hurting, are you going to have enough time to heal?  Also since Drain Life does damage and heal for Death magic.  Waay to sloow.  Doesn't compete against death or fire. 

Don't like either Growth or Shrink as Life spells.

Shrink should be a Death spell. (Life Debuff?  Meh.)

Growth should either be an Earth spell, or Earth + Life spell.

Mantle of Oceans should be, at best, 10% + 5% per Water and Life Shard.

The last game I played, my sov was a life archmage. Using Growth on my strong melee hero and Shrink on tough opponents (e.g the dragonlord) was incredibly good. You can guess, I won the game via Master Quest.