Since this is gonna be TLDR for most. I'd like to point out, friar Heal over Time group spell castable spell could be a longer duration. To be viable it would be like this:
Friar has already casted its self long duration buffs. Then working with a decent realm ability boosted proc pbaoe group heal. at sign of an encounter, cast group heal over time, duration 1 to 2 minutes would be nice, even if they spread out some of the heal amount to heal less but longer duration. then your HOT (realm ability and spec point boosted) and splash heals could take care of healing whatever is around the target u are smashing with ur staff, aka being a friar. Following assist train? This scenario makes u an awesome addition to the melee assist chain. enemy melees going for your primary healer or your mother? Ccccombo break their main assist and keep whatever target its on alive with said HOT and proc long enough for group to regain initiative. Group a bunch of long range casters with no melee? Enjoy your red resists from you and cleric, consider a few cheap points in empty mind just to beef yourself up while u play as a secondhand group healer, stand near your squishes, making them feel safe a staff wielding friar is nearby to detour threat.
now for TLDR.++
My main on Guinevere was a friar from beta till around the Catacombs era. I enjoyed how much attention the original friar team lead brought to the class to address certain issues, after it was smashed with a hard nerf bat shortly after release. The team lead stepped up and fought tooth and nail to give friars so many great changes we see here on phoenix. Sadly all that hard work was later destroyed, but kudos for phoenix for trying to resurrect the best/balanced friar version we have seen.
That said, here's my first impressions to your original post.
I know you guys made custom change to it already but he is far from being viable in group at this moment.
This is not true, it just depends on how your group composition, and your template. Mastery of the arcane, a bit of wild healing and mastery of healing (not even much needed) can go a long way just for starters. Other advice I could give on how you can change the current meta to work better for you on phoenix, but that's for people to discover. *hint* pots, procs, rogs, clickies, and many other things benefit from a few points invested in various realm abilties friars recieve, and they need to be maxxed either.
Albion is the worst realm in terms of utility classes.
Compare mid group or hib group where they can easily bring an aug healer/shaman or hib druid/warden
Compare friar to a druid or healer is not correct however,
Specifically speaking of utility, on paper yes friars are not very group friendly. Playing speccing, RA and templating a friar in a group friendly manner is a different matter.
on albion the friar is the worst when it comes to utility :
terrible styles growth rate and utility (3 chain styles to get a side stun).
not enough points to spec appropriately and get red resists/decent healer + staff
can not buff haste only the insta cele in timer
can not bring utility such as reduc endo/proc heal group
Ok. So we do get the back style snare now, at 34, which is an indicator of a good stopping point for hybrid spec.
I agreed that friars could use a few more spec points to stay viable in the uiltiy . I did the math on the char planner, approx 783 more spec points would allow for
34 staff
34 rejuv
49 enhance
1 parry.. which is too low for parry, imo ( like to have 9 to 18. to be useful without tons of attention from other sources)
So friars actually NEED the 2.0 spec point per level growth boost. This would still put them 27 points short of the 783 spec points i calculated above.
This would be where they would have to make the sacrifice. a point from 49 to 48 enhance, less rejuv more parry? less staff more utililty... which is fair. it keeps them from being defacto cookie cutter perfect. (actually 44 staff 49 enahnce 34 rejuv 18 parry would be the dream)
give him a side stun style or in the second style (instead of the third...)
I can say that this would work, and with the above example, in a world where friars get 2.0 spec point growth and have to stay under 34 staff still to be utility spec