I have done a LOT of bear tanking in pre Burning crusade retail. Here's the first few things that spring to mind.
You should enter an instance being ready to tank only if you are confident with your gear and your current level. As a small rule of thumb, a feral druid is going to tank instances about 1 to 1.5ish full levels worse than a warrior of any spec that has a shield and the right gear + macros ready to use. Bears tank worse due to no parry or shield block, that last one being huge. If you're prepared for that, it's all good.
On a trash pull of 2-3 targets you might as well save mana and not bother with the pre casting of the Heal over Time spell combo of Regrowth + Rejuenation. On a pull of 4 or more, god yes, use them. The risky way to do it is cast Wrath at max distance of your primary target, cast Regrowth on yourself while backing up 3-4 steps, finish with Rejuv, wait for cooldown to finish, and shift to bear just in time to deal with what's charging you. The trick is to complete your shift just before you are struck, because it defeats the purpose if you're being hit 2+ times while still in humanoid form with crappy leather AC.
Doing this will generate a LOT of aggro from all mobs wanting to fight, as the Regrowth + Rejuv healing threat is starting up right around the time the Wrath is landing and waking them up. Your group healer should have no problems staying defended for the first half of the fight, easily.
Aside from that, use macros so that one key is used for more than one thing so it's much, much easier to keep track of in a fight.
I'm a traditional WSAD (A&D strafe) movement key player due to decades of playing games that way, so it's how it goes. This is my macro bound to E.
start auto attack, queue maul, cast feral faerie fire if it's off of cooldown. my auto attack ability is in the last slot of my second right hand ability bar. Feral Faerie Fire is in slot 10 of that bar, 2 slots up from the auto attack.
/script if not IsCurrentAction(48) then AttackTarget();end
/script local a=GetActionCooldown(46); if a==0 then CastSpellByName('faerie fire (feral)()') else CastSpellByName('maul');end
This one casts Enrage if it's off of cooldown, and Growl otherwise. It also puts me into auto attack. Enrage is the 11th slot down on my 2nd right hand side action bar.
/script if not IsCurrentAction(48) then AttackTarget();end
/script local b=GetActionCooldown(47); if b==0 then CastSpellByName('enrage') else CastSpellByName('growl');end
General purpose leveling cat fighting macro: starts autoattack, checks if the target is bleeding from a Rake, applies it if it is not bleeding from a Rake, checks combo points, uses Rip when it's at 3 or more points or uses Claw otherwise.
You can change the combo point number easily to whatever you want, and swap out Rip for Ferocious Bite and/or Claw for Shred. I use 2 macros for different situations.
/script if not buffed('rake', 'target') then CastSpellByName('rake');end
/script if GetComboPoints()>=3 then CastSpellByName('rip') else CastSpellByName('claw');end
/script if not IsCurrentAction(48) then AttackTarget();end
The next one is for my opener attack. It's self explanatory.
/script if buffed('prowl') then CastSpellByName('pounce') else CastSpellByName('faerie fire (feral)()');end
The last one is for putting me in and out of Prowl, unless I'm in combat in which case it casts Cower.
/run if UnitAffectingCombat('player') then CastSpellByName('cower') else CastSpellByName('prowl');end
I hope these help. For several of these, you WILL need to use the Supermacro addon.
