Does anyone even use Life spells much? Out of the two of those schools I've only gotten much utility out of Blindness.
Well from life i used healing spam when my defender champ was tanking dragon its boring but works well.
Death is buged becausse spell damage perks not affect death school in 1.0 and i hate it and cry.
Also death has bad scaling with death shards except lvl 4 mele range damage spell which scales amazingly good and gives sumon upon kill.
Whither good agains mites and other packed low damage monsters, scales with death shards, so if you use corruption and have 15 of them it might be atack killer for stronest of armies.
Blind best spell ever, amazing if stacked with dodge (krax racial, perks with dodge, armor with dodge). Cheap as whore.
Spread plague does not work at all.
Supression very optional and useful only for new cities till bells and halls will be built. Higher version at lvl 3 is avesome if you have city on 3 essences tile.
Curse sometimes useful against heavy armored tanks, works wonders on dragons by the way.
Mass curse usless because it will wear out faster then you will start killing your second target, so better use it as a single curse and concentrate atacks on your victim.
Other skills has loooong cast times, easily caunterspellable, can fail and is not worth of damage/effect. This school also eats most of mana, but has tools to replenish it with sacrifice.
Well at least death can convert ANY shrines to its cause (with death trait of course), while life can only use death ones for converting, so you can boost death a lot if only damage traits will be fixed, while life will stay gimped i think. Maybe its possible to make men race with death shard trait then convert all shards with coruption and on next turn it should reconvert into life (becaus of kingdom race) but never tried this trick.