Superior Choice for an Arcane Hierophant?

[Tetraplex]

Greetings, Playgrounders

Doing a bit of theorycrafting for a concept I hope dearly to use in a game one day. The basic concept is going Wizard 3/Druid 3/??? 1/Arcane Hierophant 10/Mystic Theurge 3 to get dual 9s, decent wildshaping, and a great familiar/companion. I want to run Warforged with a swarm of bees (group's usual DM has said he would allow it to get feats as normal as long as I didn't optimize too much and honestly, I just want to be a magical transformer full of bees anyway)

However, I have found two PrCs that I like equally well that both complement the build in different ways. Master of Many Forms grants humanoid wildshaping and the ability to speak while shaped. Beastmaster on the other hand powers up my swarm as though I were 4 levels higher, meaning I would count as a 17th level druid by the end (20th with Natural Bond!) and also boosts my Wild Empathy. Decision are hard, so I've come to you excellent fellows to find which benefits are superior. And yes, I'm aware straight Druid is probably superior, at least at lower levels, but we tend to start a 6 minimum (DM finds low levels boring) and I'm the only player at my table who knows anything about optimization so the minor nerfs Theurging and role play bring are outright encouraged for party parity.

Ability scores are as follows, after level 4/8 bumps and racial mods:
STR 14
DEX 16
CON 20
INT 18
WIS 18
CHA 12

[docnessuno]

If you don't fill that slot with another level of Mystic Theurge (or similar dual-progression class) you won't get dual 9s.

[Tetraplex]

Ah, that'll show me not to work from memory. Well, for a moment let's say that this is acceptable. 8th level spells are almost as good and if we get to 20 we're likely going to epic anyway.

[sleepyphoenixx]

What docnessuno said.
If you can life with 8th/9th casting MoMF and Beastmaster are both not that great.

If you want to communicate while in Wild Shape Mindbender 1 gives you telepathy and qualifies for Mindsight.

Animal Companion gets weaker at higher levels so boosting it is a waste of time unless you get a lot out of it. Only thing that might be worth the cost is the Theurgic Bond (Dr325) feat to add you familiar level to your druid level for AC HD.

Contemplative is a strong choice if you choose a good domain. Luck domain for example gets you Miracle (and thus access to all cleric spells below 9th level and all spells below 8th).

Heir of Syberis 2 gets you a strong SLA and qualifies for Mark of the Dauntless and Mark of the Stars, both of which are strong choices.

[Rebel7284]

Spelldancer 1 is a nice dip if you can afford the feat tax. Having all your spells persisted is nice.

[eggynack]

If you don't fill that slot with another level of Mystic Theurge (or similar dual-progression class) you won't get dual 9s.
Make that two levels of mystic theurge, because that's how the prerequisites play out. There are some reasonable ways to pick up those other things you listed, if ya want. As a quick list, a pearl of speech (MIC, 118) can grant speech in a wild shape, and it may even do so without a wilding clasp, and several of the forms granted by dragon wild shape (draconomicon, 105) grant access to humanoid forms, like deep dragon (MoF,40), either the li or pan lung (OA, 156;158), silver dragon, and steel dragon (DoF,140). I would really avoid picking up the PrC's you mentioned, because they lose caster levels. That really hurts on a theurge build.