I would like to revive the discussion from Separate Button for the Lunarwing Form and also extend it to include the other travel/mount forms. This has seemingly always been a point of contention within the druid community.
In my view this can at its core be basically broken down into:
- The desire to use the Lunarwing form when you want take someone with you in a flying zone and otherwise use the standard solo travel flight form
- The desire to use the cheetah in flying zones. Currently you can only use the mount form which transforms you into a stag. There were also some calls to include the cheetah as a mount form.
While some may truly want that possibility just for the sake of riding it (looking funny when picturing a tauren doing that) I think most of them are merely because they want a way to shapeshift into a cheetah instead of the flight form.
That is why I think it comes down to 4 scenarios
Travel Form for ground and flying and the Mount form for ground and flying
What now follows assumes that the implementation is technically possible without significantly altering the code base.
So the idea I propose is to split up “Mount Form” into 2 separate abilities and add a “Travel Form” for no flying zones making it a total of 4
Travel FormTravel Form (Ground)Mount Form (Flight)Mount Form (Ground)
Travel Form should stay as is with its internal logic where it adapts based on the zone you are in. Travel Form (Ground) is to have the ability to use the cheetah or any other skin equipped at the barber.
The separate mount forms for ground and flying are self explanatory. This is my personal wish, because often times I take my kid or wife with me to do quests together and it can become quite the nuisance to go back to the barber everytime :).
Personally I think that this would not confuse people because you can still only use the default travel form as proposed and fiddle around with available options later if you so chose. After all, the current mount form is also optional and a separate button. So why not extend it to the other use cases?
And it can be made very deterministic via a macro like so:
/cast [mod:ctrl] Travel Form (Ground); [mod:shift] Mount Form (Flight); [mod:alt] Mount Form (Ground); Travel Form
Default behavior as known and then pressing the respective modifier for the other desired effect.
If from a technical perspective this is an issue to have Travel Form and Travel Form (Ground) then I would alter the solution to instead use a dedicated Travel Form (Flight) spell, which directly translates to the solo travel form.
This solution however would have an increased chance for confusion, which is why I suggest to deal with it similar to the old way the Lunarwing form was chosen.
You would need to visit a certain NPC that changes your abilites. This way the player actively seeks out this way of travel and has understood the change of what is to come.
I hope Blizzard will see this and consider this as an option in the (hopefully not too distant) future.