Thoughts on Tanking as a Bear

So, after a couple of discussions with different members of GIP I decided to take up feral on my druid to offer tanking as well as healing. In general, it just seemed that it would be nice to be able to give a bit more in the way of utility to the guild as well as give me something to do different. Also, a nice added benefit was that I found a hybrid kitty/bear spec that looked pretty promising. This way I could fit any need in any situation. I like the ranged DPS of the Moonkin but the guild as a whole seems heavy on ranged DPS, and I could really just push one of my other toons (Crabby or Orkette) the rest of the way to 85 if I really wanted to have a ranged DPS toon to add to the stable of things I can do.

Anyway, I have taken a couple of shots at tanking so far and I've learned quite a bit. First, as always gear is important. Also, paying attention is important. I took some of the info from Elitest Jerks to make sure that I wasn't doing everything wrong. From there I read some stuff on WoW Insider to get some more details. To be fair I think the Insider author was the same as the EJ author or one read the other because there wasn't much different between the two.

As I have been working up on gearing I've noticed something I haven't been able to figure out yet, and haven't found the answer to anywhere. How in the hell do I pick up groups of mobs and keep hate on all of them. I mark each pull, use Faerie Fire to pull 1 then use other abilities to pick up the second, but after that if there are more than 2, I'm screwed. Without fail, they will run by me and attack someone mushy in the back field somewhere. I turn and run to pick them up only to lose the aggro of at least one if not both of the mobs that I already had aggro on me. This then leads to a wonderful job of running back and forth like a chicken with no head (or is it bear?) trying to keep up hate on everything.

I have tried using Thrash/Swipe to help this but it does not give the huge boost of hate that I think I need to keep the things squarely on me. I have also tried the whole tab method of picking things up, but I am missing something because without fail someone is always getting their face beat in by the time I have tabbed back to whatever mob they were fighting (often the one I have marked appropriately).

It is actually pretty interesting to tank though, as it gives me a new perspective of the game. I grew up in FFXI as a tank, and the world of tanking in WoW is just entirely different. In FFXI I had to worry about keeping one thing focused on me while everyone else was doing their best to pull it off of me. This does me some good when I am doing single mob tanking, but lets face it there just isn't all that much single mob tanking out there.

Suggestions are appreciated to help my fail tanking stop.