Threat is almost impossible to maintain on larger packs w/o the appropiate gear. You should change your mindset and not expect to keep aggro on everything. Utilize the mass CC of your party (hunter’s frost trap/mages imp. blizzard) and simply try to keep the mobs away from your party as good as you can but try hold aggro on ranged mobs. You’re mainly there to single target tank CC immune mobs like bosses.
I’ve tanked all HC’s and current raids quite smoothly, it just requires a different mindset as you might be used to but threat gear does help a lot.
I think a lot of feral’s just don’t play their class/spec to their fullest extent, giving us cats a bad rep. In my experience, a good feral will bring more single target dmg than a rogue or warrior whilst bringing some lifesaving cc (cyclone/hibernate) and OT capability (picking up assassins, ranged mobs, bosses with threat wipes etcetc).
Meanwhile, our ferals are among the most stable tanks in Karazhan, Gruul & Magtheridon, have the least problems in holding aggro, and don’t fall victim to sudden burst-spikes.
I can’t say you are entirely wrong. I was feral cat PvE main in Classic Vanilla, because feral druid was my main back in 2006 and I wanted full immersion from my first character.
Sad truth is that this game was completely solved more than 10 years ago and you can’t compete with pure meta.
Ferals are good OT in raids, but you should forget cat part about it. Druids are also best PvP and good PvE healers and if you are just a social player you can even enjoy support-dps of a moonkin.
My solution was to reroll to a mage, my 2nd favorite class. Not as mad as Hunters or Warlocks as dps, but any raid is willing to take 1-2 of us.
Druids are not extremely powerful early on because they are very gear dependant, but start to shine once you have enough equipment. They are great tanks in TBC but not really good as DPS in PVE. Healers are great in PVE and phenomenal in PVP.
You can hire yourself as hunter’s pet. Boom place in dungeons reserved!
But seriously this is exacly what players wanted - museum run #nochangens. Blizz don’t want to change it because they it doesn’t pay off. Mabey even to prove their point - look how good You have it now!
I would reroll and wait with dudu to wotlk.
giving us cats a bad rep. In my experience, a good feral will bring more single target dmg than a rogue or warrior whilst bringing some lifesaving cc (cyclone/hibernate) and OT capability (picking up assassins, ranged mobs, bosses with threat wipes etcetc).