I rolled a fancy new troll druid for the lull between 4.0.1 and cata with the intention of bearing my way through instances. I am no stranger to tanking - my Paladin's a tank, and I've warrior tanked a bunch as well, so I knew the basics and figured I'd learn the druid specifics as I leveled my clown bear.

However, I had 2 terrible experiences in Wailing Caverns, where I just couldn't hold threat, and when I was getting hit I was taking TONS of damage. So, I gained a few more levels and did Deadmines at a slightly overgeared level (forget the exact level, but all the mobs were green to me). So humiliating - I was literally in tears. I died on pretty much every pull up to the first boss, and couldn't hold aggro on anything. Finally, the ret paladin in the group gently told me to go cat and let him tank. He was 3 levels lower than me, with no tank spec (not that you really need one at that level) but he had zero problems for the rest of the run - no deaths, no aggro loss, nothing.

I agree with this.... When I first tried tanking on my lowbie druid I was pretty shocked I had 2 abilities to damage/threat with, both on a 6 second cd... what was I supposed to do for the other 3 seconds? I guess I also had taunt (8 sec cd) and of course demo shout.... not too fun.... heh... that and I'm used to tanking on my max level warrior... where if you miss a gcd you're doing something wrong...

At least now in the low 20s I have an inturrupt! of course now I don't tank anyway and let my pally friend do that...

I can't upvote you enough.

All of this. It's depressing. I did semi-successfully tank SM Library at 34 - but that was at the request of the healer, who was tired of the ret pali "tank" who'd refused to even put up devotion aura, let alone equip a shield, and it was still incredibly frustrating.

The lack of AoE threat is a huge problem for low-level bears, but I find I can keep up if I chain-pull, grabbing one or two mobs, getting threat, and then moving on to the next one or two mobs before the first are dead.

The problem for me is survivability. Without heirlooms, before Thick Hide and Savage Defense, with no defensive cooldown until level 49, I just *can't* chain pull like that, the healer won't be able to keep up. I can barely take a hit!

I guess I just want to agree with you, there is no reason low-level druids should be shafted like this.

When you put it that way, I don't see why they can't add something like the new Strike or Primal Strike talents for Warriors and Shaman, respectively. Both are weaker, simpler versions of core abilities they get later on. Once you get the improved ones you can still used the old one, sure, but they share a CD so there's really no reason to.
You could argue though that Thrash and Swipe's damage are so low already there's no need to make an even worse version, but I'm sure the baby bears would appreciate it.
The only problem I can really think of is how to down-grade a name like Swipe...Maybe just a Wipe? :P

I created my druid during Wrath, just after the new Feral forms were introduced. I've been a feral / bear spec since I got my first talent point and sucessfully tanked Deadmines and the other levelling dungeons. In fact most of them were trivial, I didn't have the slightest problem holding threat.

I'm so glad I did this in Wrath instead of Cata. With all the new Troll and Worgen druids that are bound to be springing up, it's astonishing that Blizzard have managed to utterly break low level bear tanking this much. Surely they have comprehensive data on which classes are tanking what content at various levels?