For such a huge component of druid, I have to say the shapeshifting animation(s) are pretty poor.
When we see shapeshifting in cinematics/cutscenes, it appears fluid, detailed and flavourful. Now, I know they can’t make that translate into game completely but the ‘poof of smoke’ shapeshifting we have could be enhanced so much more.
I’d love to be able to see druid shapeshift in more of a fluid way that is still doable in a global cooldown.
I know its longer than one global but the worgen shapeshift looks much cooler and that hasn’t changed in about 12 years.
Worgen always shapeshifts in the same shaped worgen but it is also only slightly more involved than druid. They just replace human arms with worgen arms for few seconds before poof of smoke and there is worgen.
You can’t realy do something like that for druid because of variety of forms. Here is an idea. They could add animations where druid assumes the pose for the given animal form like he goes on all fours before changing into cat or bear, spreads arms for bird or bat form, etc. It shouldn’t be super difficult or time consuming to implement and it could make shapeshifting bit more fluid.
When i “shift” back to Druid - I mainly enjoy Paladin class - thats one of the things that hit me hard after a while: The lack of animation when shifting in and out of the morphs.
Its high time they do something nice about it. The tech is def here - its been here for decades. No excuses bar " we shift resources for more important things". Give the project to a 23y old animator , pay him 1grand and you will be impressed.