Quote Originally Posted by heavyfuel View Post
Transformation domain isn't even close to what can be accomplished with Wild Shape.

On its basest level of OP, WS gives you access to pretty much every movement speed all day long (12hrs/day at lv 6, 21hrs at lv 7). You also get to ignore your physical ability scores.

Then you get to the crazy stuff. I'm definitely not the best person to tell you about them, though. Eggynack is. The druid's encyclopaedia guide Eggy wrote has some really nasty tricks you can pull with WS.
There's certainly an advantage to having everything enumerated in one place, but I think you'll find that the Transformation domain kicks in pretty hard if you research a bit.

Transformation domain gives you Alter Self at level 3. Alter Self gives you fly/swim/burrow as well as natural armor up to +8 and claw/claw/bite w/multiattack. Clerics of course can get it 24/7 at level 3 via DMM[Persist] which has many other applications as well. Here's a tradeoff table:
Code:
Alter Self           Wildshape
+L3                    -L6 (to cast spells)
+keep gear          -lose gear
-keep physical      +new physical stats
-no Ex attacks      +gain Ex attacks
+no familiarity     -requires familiarity
Both have:
+effectively all day (via DMM persist or just hours available)
-requires feat to use fully (Natural spell, or a partial share of DMM[Persist])
+good utility
+good combat

At level 9 the cleric then gets Polymorph which is generally far more adaptable than Wild Shape. And a level 15, there is Polymorph Any Object which is broken-good. At level 17 the Transformation cleric gets Shapechange. It's not until level 18 that the spontaneous druid also gets Shapechange.

Overall, the spontaneous druid has some advantage L6-L8, while the transformation cleric has an edge L3-L5 and L9-L17.