The most significant thing in the explorer's pack is the ability to play any race, any faction You get a few other things but they are all cosmetic. 

Yeah, I don't think I'll have much use for a Scuttler...

It's unbelievable what a new ES experience brings out in me as it makes me revert to type. As I can't play as an Imperial I will have to find a substitute but definitely the Daggerfall Covenant will be my faction. High King Emeric seems to be  an advocate of the Reman dynasty. 

Yeah as much as I love Dunmer and it would be great to see Almalexia, the Covenants seem to be the most legit faction imo.

So what's your character Veloth?

High elf, Breton or Argonian for the race. 

Other things to consider is that Templars generally make much better healers than any other class, due to having a skill tree dedicated to it. Thats not to say a sorc healer can't be just as good, you just need to be running with a strong group. Also, the dark magic ultimate is awesome, especially when morphed into absorption field. 

An Orc Dragonknight in the Covenant. I plan to specialize in Earthen Heart and get him kitted out in Dwemer armor and get a Dwemer Spider as a follower. I named him Dumalacath Dwarf-Orc . I have just now escaped Coldharbor.

To intrude upon this, I'm not a particularly social gamer so can't imagine joining random people online. Would Dragonknight be viable for a more single-player experience or am I best going with Templar for healing skills?

Lol you and your Dwemer

All classes have some form of self healing and all are perfectly viable for playing solo. 

From my experience, and especially on the xbox Europe servers, most players are not very social. They just use the group finder tool (which is very easy to use, just takes a while unless you are queued as a healer) to find a dungeon group (the only part of the game where you 'need' to be in a group besides PvP), do the dungeon without talking, then leave and go their separate ways.