I m currently 31 and i wished to share my experience.

There are higher lvl friars atm. I dont mean to pretend knowing everything but i might have tried something slightly different leveling my friar.

My friar is meant to be pve only, a farmer.
Friar get evade 5 at lvl 33 and first abs buff is 26 (well, 5%...). Things become serious at 34 buff where you get +10% abs buff. I m not saying a "classic" staff/buff friar cannot solo until 30ish, i say it will be far easier AFTER lvl30+.

Leveling solo can be hard for a staff/buff friar with crappy gear on a new server especially with very few fletchers to craft descent staves.

So it seems better to be grp friendly. Keeping high staff and good heal sourded the way to go. Assisting tanks is good and you deal good dps. Then you assist healing, managing your mana with small base heal.

I tried to keep staff to my level but i ve put 7 in ench asap to get the first dext/quick buff. If i hard to reroll now i would have left ench at 1. Cleric can buff u better, AF shield spec ? One pally twist and it disappears.

Then i kept leveling staff to my lvl and raised heal.
I rushed 18 staff for the side snare, i m still 18 staff at lvl 31 and pallies still love duo with me for my dps.
Counter evade is useful when u ll really start soloing.

I tried the HoT. I had it at lvl 26 with 18 staff 24 heal 7 buff. The hp healed is low, around 40-50 hp for 5 ticks. It is 200-250 hp over 15 sec and it uses a lot of mana. A lot.

5 lvl later it goes better, a HoT use 20-25% of my mana but is still useful. How ? By using it when u should. When 3+ people in grp are agroed and things start to break ING bad, it is an amazing tool to help the cleric.

Ok but with the 18 spec heal i can heal for 215hp and my base small heal now has a value of 90hp and is very cheap, about 1/6 of a HoT.

Yes but you cannot do anything else than spam heal while doing nothing else. When i use the HoT i can go dps and use ONE big heal on the main tank and keep doing dps.

I think rushing 24 heal for the HoT doesnt worth it. It is just to expensive. I would rather stop 15 heal at lvl 20 with 18 staff.

Then i would lvl buff all the way to lvl 30 so i ll get 18 staff 15 heal 27 buff.

At 40,5 you ll have 29 staff which is good dps and anytime, 35 buff, 15 heal. Raising heal to 25 worth it for harder pve and especially raids and Sidi later on.

At the end i plan to go 29 staff 25 heal 25 parry 46 buff.
Perfect to farm anything and make raids.
I would not worry about dps with such spec, and mobs will barely touch me. I had a 50 friar in old days and i was about to solo reds with such spec.

I would personnaly try here 29 staff 34 heal 46 buff 14 parry. Second HoT, 400ish spec single heal, less parry ? More Counter Evade then.

ÉDIT : 29 STAFF 34 HEAL 48 BUFF 6 PARRY seems à good starting spec to rvr and have descent ranks for Mop Dodger moparry then i would lower ench to 46 and raise parry.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Nice to see someone enjoy playing a healing friar. Its a tough life.

I lvled with staff/enhance, and it was very easy to solo and was just a melee dps in grps with healing only when desperate or cleric aggroed.

Personally, i cannot ever go below 39 staff, as i think the DPS and weaponskill(hitchance%) is too low to be effective at all in RvR.
In regards to solo PvE, sure 29staff is fine, but with higher staff = faster kills.
In regards to group PvE, the group HoT possibly does have niche use, however, in groups, you will be fighting higher mobs and thus, will lower staff you wont hit them often and wont do much damage when you do.