@ Dewd: You're right about the "rhythm" being missing.

The real problem is that, prior to Cataclysm, the rhythm of bear tanking was "Chopsticks". We could weave in Maul or Mangle or Lacerate all we wanted, but we were ultimately still relying upon Swipe spam, which was always sort of a mind-numbing (and RSI-inducing) rhythm, when you think about it.

Now without Swipe spam, we're expected to do more tanking, but haven't been given any more (effective) tools to do so. So the best rhythm we can muster is, oh, say the bass part to "Heart & Soul": http://youtu.be/rKrZiddRphw

Warriors, in contrast, have so many tools to work with, but they must be used in concert with each other in the right way. To extend the music metaphor, they get to play Mozart, Beethoven or Tchaikovsky. Pallies and DKs are somewhat in between... Perhaps John Williams? I guess DKs have dibs on the Imperial March. :P

Anyhow, bears need more abilities, or abilities with greater synergy. Blood & Thunder offers some nice interaction between Rend and Thunderclap, two abilities that a warrior will be using anyway--it provides great blanket threat for a warrior at the expense of one GCD's worth of snap aggro. But even without a Rend, TC does provide good snap aggro--something neither Swipe nor Thrash provide. What is Maul--is it our OOC dump, making it a counterpart to Revenge, or is it (glyphed) our poor version of a Cleave, something that is fairly essential to warrior AoE threat? I say it's neither. And Shockwave is a full-blown Swiss army knife in itself--we don't have anything that comes close to that.

I don't just wish for bears to become prot warrior clones--though it would be an improvement over the current state. But yes, bears need more rhythm and more synergy... more payoff for good tanking.