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My first thought is that everybody, and I mean everybody, completly and totally over values regen forms (you have slow as a class ability for christ sake). If your goal is to PK in the current enviornment of cf (low risk of secondary engagements while you are recovering) then having a regen form usually doesn't do you any good in a one on one fight. It usually is only marginally useful in group fights due to the fact they don't have rescue abilities to force groups to focus on them.
So there are 2 traditional builds for the power gamer. Air/Offense and Defense/Offense. Personally I am surprised we don't see as many utility/offense pk shifters or water/offense. But I will discuss each of these combos a little more.
Air/Offense
This is a high engagement low outcome combo. You get kills by coming at people over and over and over until you find them in a tricky position. Most people will go air first because the greater enlivens let you stay in the sky hunting longer which maximizes your chance to find prey. You really don't need to prep much with this combo, just aura or just barrier will often be all that you need because if a fight isn't going your way its simple to fly away. Some of the third tier air forms also have very nice utility to them, the burrowing owl can see hide/camo and has burrow (completly safe healing). The skyflash has furor which is nice for mid rank pk, the boulderhawk has a dive attack that can do blackjack which is also very useful at hero. Most of the final airforms are interchangable in terms of their melee ability, for the most part they are great for sealing and finding but won't be enough to actually beat people who stand and fight (instead of run run run). You tend to get the most bang for your buck when using offense forms that have lag/direct damage (bear, wolverine, gorilla, rhino, lion) although tiger is not bad, jaguar/ram you might want to consider rolling the bones on.
Defense/Offense
This is the standard all around combo. Most people will only keep porquipine or a regen final form on the defense side. The power gamers will tend towards going defense first because the greater enlivens (especially shell of the armadillo) are really straight forward and useful for covering the weakness of the offensive forms (whereas offensive enlivens don't really do #### to help defense forms). The tactics are more prep oriented in general then with air/offense because your ability to catch people pants down is much less. Gear up for hp, throw up your wands and charge in with your offense form, when you are wounded go defense form (rope a dope if you can regen make an exit if not). You can try and whittle people down with defense forms first and then seal with offense but in practical terms that takes a lot of time usually and opponents will catch on and step out earlier in the fights. In group fights the defense forms with rescue abilities really really shine (especially in cases where you have say tortoise and porquipine and are with a lagger, you can really take people down)
Utility/Offense
This is my favorite balanced PK combo. There is a lot of upside to going defense if you plan to explore in groups but if your true goal is to PK then most of the time using a defense form is just going to stall a fight and you will find there are lots of fights your offense form just can't go toe to toe in (unless you have wild HP and dam redux). Going utility gives you that second option because most of the forms while they don't shred through opponents HP at the speed of light will actually win medium to drawn out melee battles. With the exception of the cheetah most people don't actually fear the forms either which will have them stay around a bit longer. They all(final forms) certainly have more then enough built in defense to serve as a get away from from hairy situations and unlike offense forms they can stand up against groups and actually wear down your target (unlike defense). On top of that they all have really useful side abilities (they all have dangersense) like detect all, conceal anywhere, regen (blah), smash, pounce, etc. Combined with a tiger or a direct damage offense form you can wear people down and then seal with your offense form. As far as which to take first (offense or utility) it can go either way depending on if you want to cover your weaknesess (utility) or enhance your strengths (offense)
Water/Offense
If you plan to go the super HP super prepped offense shifter route then going water/offense could be a good idea. The upside of this combo is that the water greater enlivens are a solid mix of offense and defensive enhancements and they also grant a lot of +stat to free up gear slots of HP. You also have any water area as a relative safe zone from all other people. If you luck out and get walrus or lobster then the combo can play out a lot like offense/defense.
Offense/Offense
This combo is for the pure PK minded. Each final offense form is generally either heavy melee (lots of hard to avoid hard hitting attacks) or utility/Direct damage (still hit hard but much easier to avoid and they get rake or lag options instead). Your melee type forms tend to trounce casters (since they can't stop the attacks) the utiliyt/direct damage type forms tend to trounce warriors (since they normally just parry/dodge most of the attacks of the melee forms). The ultimate goal is to have one of each so that basically you have a form to take on any opponent. This path is very HP/prep dependant (since you got no defense) and works best when you expect to have a lot of one on one fights. It tends to break down if you fight groups unless you have despoil or provost lieutenants.
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