[Desire 816 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Lanturn:
Hi all,

I know I'm a little late to the rooting-816 party, but I hope some of you experts are still around to give me some advice.

Here's my backstory:

I began learning to root for the first time a few weeks ago and soft-bricked my device a bunch of times in the process. I'm starting over and want to do everything right, once and for all, so I can get on with a functional, customized, rooted device and stop dealing with a variety of technical issues. So I'd like to ask your help in verifying if my resources are correct and up to date for the A5-CHL (Virgin Mobile USA HTC Desire 816).

The first time I tried to root, I used v_superuser's guide, installing the Clockworkmod recovery (CWM_Recovery_En.exe) and the SuperSU program they linked. Then I flashed a CyanogenMod ROM that probably wasn't meant for this device - it tried to recognize Sprint instead of Virgin Mobile as the carrier and refused to connect to the carrier's network, working only on WiFi and thus disabling call/text functionality. I considered this a soft-brick and found a way out by installing a stock ZIP (without replacing custom recovery) from insanelycool on VMRoms.

I then stuck with the stock ROM, OTA upgraded back to Lollipop, disabled HTC write protection thanks to Flar2 and CaptainTiiti, used the Clockworkmod recovery listed above to create a backup using default settings, installed this system app uninstaller, and started excising the copious amounts of VM/Google/HTC bloatware.

However, I got a little too cocky in thinking the backup would keep me safe, and uninstalled Google Account (because I despise the swipe up for Google thing). Upon realizing it caused some annoying "_____ has crashed" popups, I decided to restore from the CWM backup... aaaand my phone soft-bricked again. The ROM wouldn't load; I could only access the recovery (and maybe bootloader, I don't exactly remember).

So I reinstalled the stock ZIP I listed above, this time clearing out my custom recovery as well, because OTA updates were refusing to install. Finally, with the stock ROM+recovery, I was able to OTA update to Lollipop 5.0.2 (HTC's "software version 2.33.652.5") and now have a clean slate to start over.

Now, here are my questions:

CWM or TWRP recovery? As far as I can tell, CWM recovery's backup soft-bricked my phone, so I'm considering giving TWRP a shot.

If CWM, is this (CWM 6.0.4.7) the correct & most up-to-date CWM recovery installer for the A5-CHL? https://xdaforums.com/devdb/project/?id=3490#downloads

If TWRP, is this the correct & most up-to-date TWRP recovery installer for the A5_CHL? https://twrp.me/devices/htcdesire816.html

Is there a working-for-Virgin Mobile, well-supported, lightweight ROM you would recommend I use instead of stock?

Does anyone have a list of what stock apps (VM, HTC, Google) I can safely remove?

Is there a backup/restore utility out there that ACTUALLY restores a system to exactly how it was at the backup point? I've had failed restores over the last month on both my phone and my PC so I'm very cynical and skeptical. I hear people talk about Titanium but I don't understand how to use it.

Thank you so very much in advance for your help!! I really appreciate all the resources you folks have put together on XDA - I'm just hoping to make sure all of the resources I'm using are the best and most recent versions.