I think only bear have swipe in classic. (there is no cat form swipe when looking at the databases)

3 Rip wouldn't be too useful since you should only be able to get it off against raid bosses basically, with 4 characters dpsing you shouldn't really have time to stack combo points and have the enemy survive during the dot duration of rip.

I think you are supposed to use Shred with cat form also, which requires being behind the target so not great that you should use positioning.

I think druid dps is very low compared to other classes. I think they don't scale well with gear. I think in pvp they mostly do a dot up the target and kite while healing tactic.

I might be wrong ofcourse, I didn't play a druid. I remember they just tried to dot up in pvp then heal and I remember they they wasn't scary to fight, it was just that it was hard to kill them with their kiting so some fights could turn into a stalemate.