There is a lot of confusion around the rules of Wild Shape and its interaction with your racial traits and class features. You can heal yourself as a bonus action by burning spell slots, which helps, but it’s very expensive compared to what you can get from casting a spell with that slot.
Remember that you can only Wild Shape twice per short rest, and the DMG’s expectation of a normal adventuring day is 6-8 encounters per day with 2 short rests (See DMG : “The Adventuring Day”), so a single use of Wild Shape often needs to be able to last at least an entire fight on average. Understanding Wild Shape mostly boils down to understanding what form to take which forms work, which forms work in specific situations, and which forms just never work.
Wild Shape is an exciting and versatile Druid class feature which a lot of people want to use, but which is easy to use badly.
