Dragon Wild Shape

[Asteron]

I've made a few threads regarding the back-up character my party was told to have ready for the next session. I'm playing a 13th level druid. I currently have Dragon Wild Shape on the list but I don't know if it's worth it. It's a straight up downgrade to my physical ability scores because of my racial adjustments. All of the dragons available to me would lower my Fort and Ref saves significantly. With that in mind, is it really worth it to keep that feat? Surely there are better shapes.

[Crake]

Well you should remember that dragon wildshape gives you the ex and supernatural abilities of the dragon you who's form you take. It doesn't specify through wildshape. So if you can get yourself polymorphed into a larger dragon, you still gain all the benefits of the feat. If you take master of many forms and get the capstone ability to turn into gargantuan dragons, same thing.

And remember you don't need to turn into TRUE dragons, any dragon form works, so look around outside of the standard.

Edit: For example, Tartarian Dragons have permanent freedom of movement on themselves, even wyrmlings. So wildshaping into one of those in a pinch could let you escape from potentially deadly situations

[StreamOfTheSky]

Ok, I'm going to ignore the abusive RAW reading stuff and comment on the assumption your DM will run it as RAI (ie, you get the Su only from wild shaping into a dragon).

You are right, it's not very impressive for stats, and the breath weapons and other Su abilities of the dragons you'll actually have the HD to assume are not terribly impressive by level 12+. I do still think it's a good feat just for the versatility it adds, but it is not a powerhouse feat by any means.

Keep in mind some of the non-core dragons get interesting non-damaging breath weapon effects, too.

[sleepyphoenixx]

You can get a decent breath weapon by combining Venomfire with the Steel Dragons poison cloud breath. Decent damage with added con damage and it's not affected by evasion.
Mainly though DWS is good for utility.
Tremorsense, Blindsense, permanent True Seeing, Humanoid Shape, Sound Imitation, Shadow Blend, Tongues, Invisibility at will, Earthquake, Freedom of Movement, See Ethereal, Portal Sight, along with immunity to pretty much anything you might need at the moment and all kinds of breath weapons (including rust, level drain, poison, force).
In addition, dragons can talk and are some of the fastest fliers in the game.

It's only worth it if you have access to all those different books though.
If you're limited to SRD Dragons, don't bother.

[Tvtyrant]

Shadow Dragons are an interesting pick for Dragon Wildshape, and I like the Faerie Dragon (daze breath!)