On your last point, I would say there is nothing at all professional about templates and presets. Most professionals would prefer to make their own, original stuff. But overall I cannot imagine what sort of templates you would be after, given the kind of work Combustion is capable of. e.g. Keying and roto. What sort of templates could you possibly come up with for that stuff?
I can see some benefit in presets for some things, like maybe a "Bleach By-Pass" preset for colour correction, but even that would be predicated on the input image having a certain colour balance already. obviously there are a gazillion particles presets, and that definitely makes good sense.
If you need a hand working out how to do specific things, there are a number of handy resources on the Autodesk website, here:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5562423
There are links to pages with expressions, custom brushes and even complete workspaces that you can download and use. The workspaces show how to achieve specific effects and you could easily adapt them to something of your own.
Overall though, you have to realise that the Combustion community is a fraction of the size of the After Effects one, which means there are not the legions of loyal followers to contribute to things like this. Also, After Effects is much more focused on broadcast graphics, where Combustion is used a lot more for visual effects work, where templates and stuff don't make much sense.
I'm a contractor for Autodesk at the moment but, unless otherwise stated, all opinions expressed here are my own.
