I love the gameplay of Druid. All forms of it. However, I also love transmog and picking my race for a reason. The fact that all Druid specs except Resto have to shapeshift is what stops me from playing it.
What if there was a glyph, or a barbershop option, that let me stay in my racial form like Resto Druid outside of major cooldowns like Incarnation? Change my “forms” to “stances” or something. Bear Stance, Cat Stance, etc. They’d have the exact same function as the current forms, just I get to see my character that I made instead of a Bear or Cat butt, or Boomchicken. Balance Druid is partway there with the Glyph of the Stars allowing me to at least keep my shape, though the shimmer is whatever. On that same vein though, Balance could definitely do with a Solar Glyph since they pull from Sun and Moon, to have both options visibly.
One of the key fantasy aspects of druid is shapeshifting into different animal forms - if you don’t like this, you probably wont like Druid
There are some costumes that make it so your form doesn’t show, but they arn’t permanent, and sometimes they bug out and just go away when you enter an instance
Atomic Recalibrator
Gleeful Glamour
P.S. Both of these keep your current transmog - I like Gleeful glamour because you can buy the race you want - Atomic Recalib is completely random - Gleeful last for a max of 1 hour if you buy the maxed out version, with a 2 hour cooldown, and lasts through death.
Atomic recalib last for 1 hour and has a 12 hour cooldown, but you have to keep running over it until you get the race you want - it’s completely random
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Having played Druid over several expansions, I can in fact say I love Druid. And while shapeshifting into different forms is key to the fantasy, I’m not asking that go away.
Resto Druid used to have to shift into Tree Form to get its power boost to healing spells and access to a few others (I am fuzzy on this bit as I didn’t touch Resto back then personally). This was changed in Cataclysm. One of the points made by Ghostcrawler was that “Our feeling is that druids rarely actually get to show off their armor, so it would be nice to have at least one spec that looked like a night elf or tauren (and soon troll or worgen) for most of the time.” (Tried to link to the Bluetracker, but it won’t let me post the link. Search “Cataclysm Class Preview: Druid” to find the full post)
I am just asking for that same treatment to optionally apply to other Druid forms. I want to be a Druid, I want to look like a Tauren, but I don’t want to only be able to heal in doing so. Yes, Gleeful Glamours and the Atomic Recalibrator function as a workaround to this, but as you mentioned, the Atomic Recalibrator is random and has a long cooldown, and Gleeful Glamours also have a cooldown (albeit much shorter), but I don’t get to pick what I look like outside of the race I chose.
We have druids that enjoy that too, but animal forms are the centerpiece of our class fantasy…
idk about always being in caster form, but the best option would probably be moonkin role, because of the glyph of stars.
Def don’t play resto, because you’ll be using every single form, and there’s no way around that if you’re wanting to play optimally.
Good luck friend, I hope you can re-connect with nature and find the animal form that suits you best 
Glyph of the Stars is, to me, an ugly “fix” as it only solves part of the problem. Instead of me getting to see my character and my transmog, I get to see a transparent ghostly version of it instead.
My idea/hope doesn’t remove animal form shapeshifting. It just gives it the option to be more than just a form I’m stuck in all the time.
Yeah I just checked and saw you’re a bear…that one will be tough to figure out friend, because you’ll need that thick hide to kill the monsters and orcs.
Let us know when you figure out the way friend
OP: “Hey, Blizzard! Make me a Guardian Druid, and hold the shapeshifting!”
Blizzard cashier: “…hold the shapeshiftin’? Hey, Dev! Gimme a Guardian Druid with nothin’!”
Developer: “With nothin’?!”
-ahem- More seriously, about all you can do right now is to use toys to transform yourself into something else. I think you can use a projection prism on someone twice (once to swap appearances, a second time to swap appearances back) to keep your humanoid form while actively tanking as a guardian druid.
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Oh I know all the workarounds that are available, I just am making a suggestion to Blizz.
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I would love to see in the future armor on the druid forms. At least start with bear and cat forms, and allow us to do different armor typs. Kind of like Dracthyr. would be very cool to see on minimum the base cat forms, more customization.
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Maybe an optional reagent for crafted bracers and shoulders to cause the armor to become visible on bear and cat forms.
This would be a step in the right direction for me. I’d still like to be a Tauren though.