Ideas on how to make the new cat/bear forms scale with gear

One of the biggest complaints of the druid community has been that, while everyone else gets to see their characters look more and more awesome as they progress through content, us druids are left looking at the same old animal forms. It wasn't too bad back in the days of vanilla WoW, when the only way druids could contribute to raids was to heal and Tree of Life didn't exist. Since we spent all our time healing, we spent all our time in caster form, so we got to see our armor change like everyone else. Fast forward to BC, and there was a shapeshifting form for every spec. Sure, there were Dreamstate healers who healed in caster form with healing touch, but for the most part, every druid spent most of his or her time in a shapeshifting form. It was here that boredom began to creep in, as everyone was getting decked out in their T4, 5, and 6 armor and we looked exactly as we had since level 10/20/40/50 (bear/cat/moonkin/tree, respectively).

The new forms that we are getting in patch 3.2 will certainly help to alleviate our boredom with our current forms, but Blizzard still has not unveiled any plans to make our forms change as we get better armor. Some may question the necessity of such a system, but I doubt that there are many non-druids out there who would be happy with their armor never changing on a cosmetic level. If they get to see their character become progressively more cool as they get better armor, why shouldn't we?

There was an entry of wow.com's Shifting Perspectives column that detailed the issues that such a system would create. (I ♥ Allison Robert, by the way.) According to that post, there could only be two systems for druid forms to scale with gear: the first is that our forms would improve as we got better gear (or from some other indicator), and they would continue to improve as our gear got better, getting more and more cool as we went through the various expansions. The other system is that we would start over with the most basic versions of our forms every time an expansion came out, meaning if you had all best-in-slot gear and had the best druid form, when the next expansion came out, you would start from square one. The first system presents the problem of creating more work for the art department. It also presents the issue of how the art department can keep expanding on our forms. To paraphrase the article, after they've added as many symbols as they can, how else will they change our forms? Adding more bands? gems? tufts of hair? rockets? As for the second option, if we simply started over with our most basic form every time we started a new expansion, druids would eventually get tired of progressing through the same cycle of changes to our forms.

So how can we scale our forms with our gear? How can we druids show off just how phat our loot really is? I personally think that the idea of coming up with a new set of druid form artwork with each expansion isn't that bad of an idea. (Sorry, Allison.) That said, I don't think they should completely revamp our forms with each expansion. Rather, Blizzard could keep the basics like colors and models the same and simply change the details. Specifically, they could change the symbols above the front legs and the necklaces.

Currently, the symbols on bear form are a circle with a dot in the middle and an arc under it. It is the same on cat form minus the circle. I think that cat and bears still leveling in Azeroth could keep this symbol, and new symbols could be given the druids who are mostly decked out in gear from one of the other continents. Perhaps a crack to represent Outland's fragmented structure and an ice crystal for the frozen wastes of Northrend. If the next expansion ends up being the Maelstrom as people suspect, we could get a whirlpool design. You may think that this kind of theme-based symbol design may be somewhat cliché, but since druids are masters of nature, it's not unreasonable to expect their forms to mimic the world they inhabit in some way.

(Edit: Since I wrote this, the next expansion has been confirmed to be taking place in a sundered Azeroth. A crack would probably better represent that level of gear than Outland gear.)

I also think the symbol could change color to reflect the quality of the gear the druid is wearing. Due to the eclectic nature of vanilla WoW gear, this may not be practicable for pre-60 druids, but once they get to Outland, I think this would be rather easy to implement. After all, in both Outland and Northrend, the lowest level blue-quality gear tends to be just a smidgen better than the equivalent highest-level green gear. Thus Blizzard could set up a scale by which the symbol gets brighter as the average ilevel of the druid's gear increases. The symbol could also change color as the druid moves from mostly greens to mostly blues to mostly purples. Since the same shade of green that would look good on the white cat model would probably not look good on the black cat model, Blizzard would probably need to come up with different shades of greens, blues, and purples for the different models. The symbols could change their design based on which level of content the majority of the druid's gear comes from: mostly Outland gear would be a crack, mostly Northrend gear would be an ice crystal. The symbol could also keep its brightness relative to the content it comes from, so someone in the best Outland gear possible would keep a bright purple crack until they upgrade to Northrend blues and get a blue ice crystal.

As for the necklaces, because they are a more subtle feature of the design, they could simply be designed after the kind of trinkets (in the sense of tchotchkes, not equipment) the druid would pick up in their respective continents. Perhaps burning legion paraphernalia in Outland or Vrykul artifacts in Northrend. The necklaces could then simply become more detailed as the average ilevel of the druid's gear increased. Perhaps more gems could be added or certain parts made bigger.

These are just some ideas. I do not think it would be very hard to implement something like this in the game. However, after looking at the same cat for at least three years, I'm happy with the changes we are getting and promise not to complain for at least another expansion pack.