How Blizzard could make shifting more attractive for druids

One of the things Blizzard revealed with the druid class Q&A was that they want to make shifting more attractive for druids. Currently, we druids spend most of our time in or respective shapeshifting forms rather than in our caster form, so we rarely get to see our armor or take advantage of our class's hybrid nature. It seems the Blizzard wanted to start doing this immediately, as we can see with one of the changes coming in patch 3.2.2.

Predatory Strikes: This talent now also causes the druid's finishing moves to provide a 7/13/20% chance per combo point to make the next Nature spell with a cast time below 10 seconds instant cast.

This means that cats will at least have the chance to see their caster forms more often, with each finishing move allowing the use of an instant healing touch or regrowth or maybe even rebirth. I could see other such changes to make shifting out of our forms an attractive option. A similar talent for bear form could look something like this:

Protector of the Pack: This talent now also causes barkskin to allow you to retain bear form's damage reduction, armor and stamina increase, threat increase, and all other benefits of being in bear form for 33/66/100% of its duration if you leave bear form.

This would allow a tank to leave bear form and heal his allies or use a crowd control spell, without him loosing his increased defenses. Admittedly, a druid using this kind of ability would probably cause less threat with his spells than he would with by staying in bear form, but the goal here is simply more utility. I'd probably use an ability like this to throw down tranquility when the going gets tough. Your healer would love you for that.

Although it would be easy to suggest using similar talents to motivate druids to leave moonkin and tree form, the fact is that most balance druids have no real reason to leave moonkin form, and most resto druids have no real reason to leave tree form. Sure, a moonkin could cast the occasional side heal, and a tree may need to use cyclone in an emergency, but for the most part, there's little reason to make caster druids leave their forms aside from simply doing it for its sake. Feral druids do need to shift out to heal, so such talents are useful to us, but they wouldn't be as useful to casters.

This only applies to PvE, though. In PvP, it's a different story. A moonkin fighting on his own can only count on himself for heals, and a tree needs to use his defensive spells to stay alive. Thus, in PvP, pretty much all druids have a reason to shift out of their forms already, and the change to predatory instincts will simply make it easier for feral druids. Perhaps moonkin and trees could get a talent reducing the cast time of their restoration and balance spells, respectively, by 50% after they leave their forms. Aside from that, I think that casters are all set in the see-their-forms department when it comes to PvP.

Like I said, though, in PvE, there is very little real motivation for caster druids to leave their forms currently, so Blizzard would need to create that motivation, and doing so without nerfing the forms themselves would be quite difficult. One of my initial thoughts on a way Blizzard could motivate casters to leave their forms without nerfing the forms themselves was to give casters a buff to their forms that contrasts the benefits of moonkin/tree form. The problem with that idea is that both forms increase damage/healing and either reduce the mana cost of spells or have a way of giving the druid mana back. Thus there isn't much that the two forms don't currently offer druids who use them.

Truly, the only drawback of moonkin/tree form is that they don't allow the use of most restoration/balance spells, respectively, but in a PvE environment, this is not a cause for concern. Unless this simple fact changes, caster druids will be forced to stay in their forms unless Blizzard can somehow change druids fundamentally.