@rhand or anybody else looking for some experience, mine is kind of recent but after playing for a while with a forge provisioned load balancer with ok/expected results, we''re now moving all our websites/apps into that architecture.
We're at Linode. Also tried linode load balancing offer, it works quite well actually and it has more functionality in terms of defining how load should be distributed, throttling, health checks, etc, actually I stumbled with this very thread looking to see what I could find on that regard for the forge provisioned. I think it is a more solid solution.
The problem for us was that we use Let's Encrypt for certs, so the ability to define and then have renewals in autopilot is a must, the forge provisioned load balancer server provides this. (*)
We currently use cheapest linode server to load balance 3 web tier servers, we have a mixture of WordPress sites, Laravel apps, static content. Even cheapest load hardly goes over
(*) Linode load balancer has an api, maybe one could see to program the renewal lf certs using the magic of forge and then have them pushed to the balancer, as I understood a balancer can manage several certs.