I think it has a lot to do with one of two things.
1) Bear Tanks take more damage than other tanks.
- This, of course,
is a generalization. But from my own experience on both sides of the table, it's accurate.
I leveled from 1-80 as a Feral with a tanking build. It wasn't hard, had good gear and got several compliments on the way up for being good at it. Once I got into heroics I didn't have threat problems, and rarely had issues. After a couple weeks though, starting with one priest healer I had in Heroic UK, people were hesitant or resistant to inviting me as a Bear tank because I take more incoming damage than other tanks with equivalent gear. No sweat, no problem, I had planned on Resto anyways. (At the time I was also resistant to believe that Druids took more damage, afterall, I had good gear and was good at my class right?)
Now that I've healed about 3x as many heroics as I've tanked, I can honestly say that Bear tanks do infact take more incoming damage. What's funny, is that as a druid it's actually easier to heal a Bear because the damage is mostly steady so there's no wasted mana or cooldowns. But I can forsee problems for other healers with long cast times on multi-pulls (Healing Wave/Greater Heal). Especially during fits of bad luck where you don't dodge for 8-10 hits in a row.
2) Druids who are normally Bear tanks have put their Bears on hold
until the next patch normalizes our armor with the change to the SOTF talent (+66% armor) so we're not sacrificing good gear in slots for armor bonus trinkets/rings etc.
This seems more in-line with what's actually happening. If they wanted to tank, they're going to tank anyway regardless of what people tell em, but if they know that it's going to get better/easier in a short time from now and it's better for em to do something else in the meantime such as, level a DK or whatever, why not do that until then?
Bear tanks aren't going extinct, they are in hibernation. It is pretty dang cold in Northrend.
Edited, Jan 9th 2009 4:06pm by Paracleets