Just looking for some tanking advice.

[Steady]

Brutal Swing is a dps increase. The only time you shouldn't use it is when you need to wait to use it to stun something significant that would either hurt teh raid or slow dps.

Defensive cooldowns, not using them is just silly. Inner Beast even as it is is also another DPS increase. It's Defense effect really doesn't mean a whole lot until you start getting to lv 50/lv60 content.

Also defensive cooldowns allow for healers to add to DPS because they aren't worrying about trying to spam heal you for being lazy with popping buttons.

But yes... not using your abilities that make you a tank DOES make you a bad tank. Defensive abilities aren't so much of a pause of damage as they are consisant mitigation of. I usually use one with each mob pull, which is to say when all trash mobs are alive.. by the time it wears off, most of them are dead. I like to use Thrill of Battle for longer pulls where I know the healer is going to be chasing after me and can't always get off a quick heal. Foresight isn't much but it still helps reduce incoming damage.

I'm a little confused by your post, cause it sounds like your knowing exactly what your doing wrong, but want someone to tell you that you are doing it wrong.