I had asked nuhi this question a long time ago. But I can't find it now. (I searched for "ergodic" because I had asked him if Live Removals vs. Offline was an ergodic process. But I can't find a hit to my question in this, or the old archived, forum.)
I used to do offline removals. Advantage - a smaller wim, Windows installs marginally faster. The installation might be marginally smaller too. (But see my post about "You CAN be too thin." While it's cool to have a small install size, I prefer leaving a little meat on the bones if it helps the OS to run better.)
This last time I changed my workflow. I now do oifline Updates first. Then offline Font, Keyboard, Language Removals. Then off line add - AND remove - drivers for my AMD RAID install. Then install. And then after Windows is installed and running, then Live Removals.
My thinking for changing the order is to minimize dependencies in Windows as it installs. To get everything working with each other. And then perform surgery.
I ended up with virtually the same final size. Nuhi told me that there might be some empty directories left over. If there are, they are no big deal.
So far Win8.1 Pro is running very well. (After tweaking with AutoRuns.)