Resto staff is great for soloing due to the 10% damage bonus to all abilities and strong HoTs while still working fine with stamina builds. Don't bother trying become a group healer unless you go fully into magicka though.

I did the Bowplar routine and added Restoration on second bar for heals in groups dungeons. I turned VR1 yesterday, so it is a viable spec. I am reading however, that in VR country, this might not be the case anymore, but to me this is just hearsay until I've experienced it first hand. Towards the end I found myself to be quite squishy in some situations and more often than not mana deprived. I do not try out much, so my standard routine is hardly optimal for all situations, thus the squishieness. I tried 2h at 30ish or so but dropped it again, too slow for my liking and after playing ranged so long didn't feel right. I might need to reconsider adding a melee skill now though.

Bowplar makes some fights ridiculously easy, especially if you can knockback/root the mob and it needs to be in melee range. Takes forever but you don't need to collect any scratches on you armor. Some other fights are not so good, especially if you have many ranged mobs and they spread out. In those case I just run into the pack and spam my shards. I found that my bow shooting was underpowered dps wise on a regular basis compared to other weapons, but not as bad to as to drop it, as you can kite some encounters that are tough to melee otherwise.

I've seen other classes do better, but I've also seen some only being successful because I added a heal onto their side of the scale.

To sum it up, you can do bowplar and restoration up to veteran ranks and be fine. I did it and I consider myself to be a lazy and mediocre player. If it works well enough in 85% of the cases, I don't even bother changing routines.