Sheezabeast wrote: »

I don't know a single person or build that uses Force Siphon. This skill needs a revamp very badly.

Not exactly a Templar specific problem, but yeah, this. Cast times are in-game equivalent of a wet-willy. I can tolerate them, to a point; but eventually they just make me want to hit someone.

Clappy Hands (I don't know the actual name of the Templar skill without getting online, haha) has never really had a place on my bar. Even after they removed the cast time. I simply don't need such an expensive heal that does nothing I couldn't do other ways more efficiently. I'd love to see it reworked somehow. Maybe like a powerful magicka version of Echoing Vigor.

I know some people do like and use it, but Radiant Aura seems like it could do better too. My thought would be to have it grant the Minor Health, Stam, and Mag regen to nearby allies for ~20sec, in addition to a short duration of Minor Protection or something.

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Restoring and Radiant Aura. Repentance is great, the base and the other Morph needs some work. I think Radiant used to provide both Major and Minor versions of the recovery, I would like it to go back to that instead of a blanket magicka steal debuff. It doesn't seem to work right and as a healer, it aggroes more things than you actually want, especially in tight areas.

It no longer agros this was fixed.

We should get Major mending Back. Wtf is a Templar without Major mending???

chesspilgrim wrote: »

as a templar healer, my class skills really are not my problem. my problem is with this support mentality, what is expected of a healer, because it is not supported (in my opinion) by the game design.

*snip* (for length)

maybe my understanding of the support role is misinformed. i will gladly accept feedback. i would like to know if these things: synergies, breaches, and aoe status effects (that also deal damage and taunt) are actually all reasonable support functions that are working as designed. double slotting a resto staff is not even possible in a support role. is this by design?

For the last point in particular (aoe damage/status effects), it's probably more accurate to think of these as support optimizations rather than requirements. Doing things the way you describe is what top tier groups have found to be most efficient so that each party member can focus on their own optimized role to get things done as fast as possible. They're vying for the best scores in the world, after all. Could other party member take care of the concussed/Off-Balance with lightning aoes? Sure. But (at least sometimes, as it can change between patches) Lightning damage isn't optimal, so no DD in the group runs it. So it gets relegated to the healer, since your dps is the one that makes most sense to sacrifice. (Also, you run Elemental Drain more for the Magickasteal debuff, not the Major Breach. Major Breach will already be applied on any enemies who matter by the tank 95+% of the time.)

Furthermore, double Restoration staves wouldn't really open up too many extra options for you. The important Resto skills can go on one bar, but you still have skills like Shards(and/or Orbs), Breath of Life, Purifying/Power of the Light (to name a few) to fit into the build somewhere; and they can go on any weapon's bar. One of the main reasons the other weapon for a healer is usually a Destruction staff is the horribly unpleasant cast time Force Siphon has (more specifically, the Siphon Spirit morph). If you're the only source of the Minor Magickasteal buff for your group, you have three options: The horrible and clunky cast time of Siphon Spirit, the Templar skill Restoring/Radiant Aura (which is regarded as a waste of a skill slot by many, and also a non-starter if you chose Repentance), or the easy and free to use Destruction Staff skill (which doesn't even draw aggro!) Elemental Drain. It's an easy choice for most. Plus, if you care about it, you can get more dps using a Destruction staff on the back bar vs two Restoration staves. Again, it's mostly a question of optimizations.

The main thing I'm trying to relate here is that most of the "requirements" you run into are largely just people imitating what they know better groups do, in highly coordinated runs of very hard content. If you're feeling like mixing it up in normal trials or pretty much any dungeon environment, I say go for it. Those are the places to experiment and learn and have fun with things. Because, while you didn't outright say it, I get the impression you have a sort of "why is it my job to do your job?!" kind of feeling when it comes to healer "requirements", and I totally get why people feel this way. If you don't understand the why of some of this stuff, simply being expected to "just do it because it's a healer's job" seems unfair. Especially in situations where you clearly don't need top 1% of the world's population performance to accomplish what your group is after. I get an annoyed chuckle out of people who get all panty-twisted over my off-the-wall healer setups I try out... in places like veteran Spindleclutch 1 or normal Sanctum Ophida, and the like.

Your understanding seems to pretty good to me; you just want to dig into the reasons why the things you've learned are important for a healer are... well, important for a healer. You're on the right track.