I totally understand your fear of defoliation. It’s really easy to get caught up in it - it’s almost like the damn plant hypnotizes you and you just mindlessly clip away at leaves and then suddenly you’ve got a Charlie Brown Christmas tree!!
But if you’re going to grow, defoliating is something that you’re going to need to get comfortable with so don’t abandon it.
Start by cleaning up junk from the bottom. Those lil stragglers that will never amount to anything.
If you’re not quite ready to SCROG consider purchasing YoYos and use them to create an even, open canopy. This will also allow your more inferior bud sites and branches to develop into juicy, sticky, fat nugs.
I also find that the tie down method also helps control and direct my defoliating. I can see what’s going on without aimlessly clipping away.
Another method I use when defoliating (and I get laughed at by my staff for this, but f*ck them, lol) is I lay down on the ground, head next to my bucket and I look up from the bottom. Now I can see what my lower and interior buds and branches see. Who’s blocking who?? Who’s small and weak and stealing valuable energy? Who needs to be adjusted?
Then, I get my small ladder (I’m a very short girl, lol) stand on the top step and look down. Now I see what my light “sees.” Again: who’s blocking who? Who’s encroaching on who? Who’s getting greedy and needs to be tied down more?
At the beginning of your grow journey it’s important you get to know your plants and your equipment. Get in there and see what your girl sees!!
When we treat our green goddesses kindly, they aaaaaaaaallllwaaaaaaaaaaaayyyys return the favor. 
The whole concept of why scrog is so productive particularly under artificial light is penetration. I love that word! The sun travels and reflects of other surfaces much more efficiently than single point projection. People are employing moving fixtures to emulate this. The sun is also vastly more powerful than a lamp! A large plant outdoors gets better light penetration because of this. Indoors the lighting, as seen by charts is strongest in the middle typically and weaker to the outside, unlike sunlight which tends to be pretty even across the plant. By scrogging, we spread the plant out to maximize the effectiveness of the lighting fixture so that the plant covers the effective distribution of the lamp primarily in distance from the fixture. Some growers are employing strip lighting as side illumination to improve this penetration. If we look at a typical non trained plant, we see its taller with a main cola. This cola is closest to the fixture and is collecting the lions share of the light energy while the energy decreases dramatically the further away we get. Therefore, the lower buds don’t develop like the main cola. We enhance this effect by training because growth regulating hormone called an auxin tells the plant I’m the main leader ( the top of the plant or growing tip of the banch) when we prune or supercrop we make those hormones go elsewhere and elect a new leader! This stimulates new branching and instructs the plant to make new leaders, multiple leaders. There are valid reasons that scrogging is so productive. It isn’t just filling a net with branches.
Sorry, I just realized I had more replies haha. So, currently I have a single Hillpow 300w full spectrum light - https://www.amazon.com/HILLPOW-Spectrum-Plants-Indoor-Hydroponic/dp/B075M3XKVJ would it benefit me to get a better light if I am just growing a single plant at a time? Would a 1000w or 1500w be overkill? Is there such a thing as ‘too much light’? 
I did clip the lower leafs, in fact I took 2 handfuls off, and here it is a week after… haha, I can’t even tell I took any off…
Update, getting there. I found I was not giving this plant nutrients through the grow, I thought, for some reason, purified water was the correct to use, found out that purified water has no nutrients/minerals (duh) switched to tap water for the last 2 waterings but makes me wonder how much better it would have done had i used the correct water through the grow. Luckily had used happy frog soil so it was balanced at the start.
The issue with tap water is that it may contain any possible combo of stuff in no particular amounts. It may contain things plants dont want or need. And more than likely does not have enough of any one thing to be of much use. If you plan to use tap water get an analysis from the supplier. It’s usually fairly consistent and then you will know.