The key take away is that none of you were crit. Nobody is going to argue that bears aren’t a better sponge for physical damage so long as crits and crushing blows don’t occur. The problem is when they do happen and it spikes your health down in a way that warriors can outright avoid with shield block. Assuming it doesn’t kill you, it’s more work for the healers; and unlike a burst damage mechanic, the crits/crushes are pure RNG. It’s a perfect cocktail for getting gibbed.
Bears have overall less avoidance than equally geared warrior tanks; point being that an impressive dodge streak for a bear can easily be matched by a warrior through dodge+parry. Avoidance isn’t an advantage of bears.
These aren’t crit/crushes that will matter, so I don’t know why you’ve brought it up. This seems like a reason to take bears into dungeons rather than raids.
But it is RNG. The warrior gear is also RNG, but they have more options which does mean that they’ll get decent gear more easily than a bear. All tanks share the benefit of prio for tanking gear. I’d say there’s more contention for bear pieces from other classes/specs than there are for tanking plate, tanking weapon, or a shield.
Bears are reliant on a best case scenario, and more gear will always mitigate the insta-gib RNG, but you will never escape the reality of crits/crushes making bears less reliable mitigation tanks than warriors. Bears excel on fights where those two mechanics don’t matter. So it’s always worth it for a raid to have a geared feral tank, but they’ll never replace warriors as main tanks.