The HP buffer is actually the biggest liability. Sitting in wolf form, ate a crit from the ogre trio that sent my druid straight to death status. This woukd have been drastically less likely to happen sitting on my high AC humanoid form.
I don't see how extra HP is a liability. Crits are automatic hits regardless of AC. Being in humanoid form would have just meant you had that much less of a health pool, and might have died outright from massive damage bringing you to your negative max health (Does BG3 have that mechanic?)
And regular attacks, while they might have missed your high-HP humanoid form, will most often do less than the 18-30HP of your wildshape form.
I agree that wild shaping is incredibly suboptimal because you're sacrificing dealing damage for extra health (especially with Larian's concentration spells and polar bear multi-attack nerfs), and in D&D it's almost always better to deal damage. But the HP buffer of wildshapes will rarely make it
more likely for you to die.
Is that how they actually work? Is it not a separate die to hit and then another one for whether it crits? I coukd have sworn I did an exposing bite on wolf and then Lazael promptly missed her swing, eating up the debuff for a guaranteed crit and doing no damage. Then again, I could have read that wrong.
I just say that the extra HP feels like a liability because on average with how hard enemies hit (even lowly goblin shamans are hitting a witchbolt for 12 damage, for example), an AC in animal form makes you waste a turn losing a form in 1-2 enemy actions, whereas at 19-21 AC the vast majority of non grenade attacks are missing you altogether.
In this game the adage of avoiding damage >>> mitigating it holds especially true with current balancing. I really hope they do something to rein in such deeply stark binary outcomes.
And I hope when they fix forms, its more than just polar bear damage. All the forms except perhaps spider and raven need work.
In particular its pretty glaring how even the tadpole shapeshift, a once per long rest power, isnt even a bonus action shift for moon druids, and has less health than a wolf while having abysmal hit rates and completely mediocre damage despite being a glass cannon form.
And the int debuff bonus skill is too gimmicky. It only benefits someone like gale in the group, and int saving throws are rather few for Gale's attacks anyways, and Gale is using force missiles with the necklace assuming he has a less than 90% hit rate with Ray of Flame+Hex combo.
These forms need work. And my point is that for both circles of druid, forms are a class defining mechanic that should feel good abd attractive to use, the main difference being how much you lean into each aspect.
