I was Jarson: Outlander with air major Falcon/Dire Wolf, although I re-rolled Vulture. I also had crag soarer and would echo your thoughts on regen - I can only think of one fight where it saved my life and TBH a 'heal heal' would've done the same.
I feel like I hit the lottery with my forms but I couldn't stand the play style of the character.
My fights basically went two ways:
1. I would watch from the skies and pick on people in vulnerable positions.
Windwalk is amazing for hanging out in the air with 1mv required to change rooms. Dire Wolf was also the perfect opportunist as it has an extremely reliable trip.
Essentially I would watch for people to fight each other, a big mob, raid, etc. Then I would either move to their recall or fly ahead of the path I can see them taking, shift into Dire Wolf and catch them with trip in movement spam. As an example I would see someone walking west down East Road, so I'd fly to Galadon, drop into market square, shift into Dire Wolf, sprint east and wait at the crossroads with trip. This was a very effective, if cheap way of killing people.
Another was to simply flyto two people fighting and start tripping one, I could usually flyto, revert, dispel flight, shift and start tripping before they could react. If the other person could also trip (regardless of they're friend or foe) they'd often join my trip spam and it was again an easy kill.
2. In a fair 1 v 1 fight I would ABS up + all other preps, go in and have the most boring fight of my life. I think I got one kill this way as it is so easy to run from a shifter (even an air major). If I didn't ABS up I would often get smashed - the Dire Wolf did not tank well, even with Deftness of the Falcon. The Falcon was extremely good however outdoors.
Essentially I ended up deleting because I felt so cheap. All my kills were from the most brutal ganks or dirtiest tricks I could think of. It was satisfying at times but I copped a fair bit of IC rage and people learned very quickly to adjust their play style when I was online. Any time I tried to for a fair or a real fight, it was a yawnfest with minimal tactics and kills/deaths.
I know there's many serial shifter players out there, and power to you, but its just not my cup of tea.