Our raid is int he process of gearing up for SSC and Hydross in particular. Due to a temporary shortage of MTs it looks very much as if I'm going to be tanking him at some point.

Although +def isnt too much of a problem, try as I might I'm struggling to get some high NR without completely gimping myself for dmg/threat. Looking at wowhead for all possible items (including farming outdoor dragons, AQ etc) it's still pretty poor. Am I flogging a dead horse here, or is less than ~260 unbuffed NR acceptable?

Looking at things FrR seems easier, but I may just be passing the problem onto the Warrior MT. Failing anyting else I suppose I'm going to have to camp the AH for high lvl green NR items?

Don't bother, its being changed to 500% damage soon. You should learn it the right way first.

OKAY OKAY, so you wanna do it this way anyway.
Don't do it with a druid unless he can sustain 22k HP in max NR.

You need an NR tank to do it the right way too...

A druid can easily tank it using standard methods.
Is 260 enough? I don't think so... the returns you get are absurd for the last few points of resists. But the question is, "is it enough?" The answer is of course - yes... Just not recommended.

Druids make the best OT's imo, especially as the MA, since their aggro is solid, and their ability to accumulate decent sets of resists + uncrittable, or hybrid of resists is amazing in this role.

If you must MT it, part of the fight comes down to snap aggro. Not trivial with poor tanking/dmg gear. Warriors excel here with HS/SS, etc as well.
You could also rely on misdirection, which we kinda did on our "Regular" kill.

Still, I'm not sure this thread is really much more than asking for what you should already know. Most of the time these threads the original poster knows what must be done. So its kinda silly to expand beyond that.

I suppose my question would be, how is it that hard to find warriors? Granted, the investment for the epic NR is pretty substantial for a guild, but wouldn't there be many warriors who'd jump at the chance to hit Serpentshrine?

This might be totally off-topic, but imo tanking warriors are about the most guild-loyal players in the game. I cant see many tanks leaving their guild just for a shot higher up, especially past the "MC level".

You need tanks to offtank adds anyway, whats the big deal? Druids are so well suited for that role its crazy. Hopefully this isn't something as silly as an ego thing.

Or it might be exactly what the OP said, that due to a temporary shortage of MTs he's going to end up as one of the MTs for Hydross, period, and is looking to see if it's possible to assemble a viable gear set for the fight. Seems pretty simple to me.

Are you kidding? The only way you have a MT/warrior shortage on Hydross is if you only have 1 warrior.
2 warriors on him, the rest can be anything, hell a paladin would work. It sounds more like a strategy problem, or a lack of willingness to pay for the appropriate epic NR gear and respec.

You can do this guy any number of ways, and I already provided my advice on how he could do that even as a MT, but a "warrior shortage" on Hydross is just absurd.

He posts "Looking at things FrR seems easier" - which is of course not the case for warriors - craftable epics are basically plate in this case, for this purpose. Further, I would guess he could do better with FrR as a druid since at least he'll have some options from Naxxramas.

Is their strategy really 1 warrior, and 2 to 3 feral druids? (this is why it sounded more like an ego or strategy thing to me) If so then I feel your pain buddy, but Raienna offered a solution to that as well. And the advice above about if you must do it applies too.

The investment on epic NR isnt more than a couple hundreds of gold, but that's not the limiting factor either. The place isnt crawling with warriors any more, it's more of a rare class right now. No warrior comes just to see that cave, and you cannot rely on the ones that come anyway.

"Temporary MT shortage" might indeed mean that they are down to 1 reliable warrior for the near term. Virakar was in that state in the very recent past and we are close to the edge of it now. If I were running a guild with that kind of shortage, the investment in a full suit of epic NR or FrR for a warrior who is considered unreliable might not make sense. Or assume that they have 3 warriors who are all hovering around 50% attendance. On any given night, one of them is there, maybe 2, but it's not very consistent. On the other hand, the bear tank is there every night. Makes more sense to have the bear MT and invest in getting him the best gear possible while the warriors do the OT thing (as you can get away without a bajillion gold in resist epics for an OT.)

If you have a prot warrior and a fury/prot warrior, then you have two warriors who can tank Hydross.

That said, a bear tank could work fine. I don't see why not. You can get uncrittable (may need resilience to help with this) but you'll need good greens to round out your set. The problem is that if you ever have him hitting you with a 250% mark, you are in serious trouble, even if only for a moment.

A more standard approach involves two warriors for Hydross, and two other tanks (often druids) for his adds.

Honestly, doing it the correct way you could wear nothing but greens and tank Hydross with little to no difficulty (the CORRECT greens). For druids you need even less epic gear because of the base 3% crit talent. Threat is never a problem, because of the 4 adds at each transition switch, you should get plenty of time to build up a decent amount of agro, and should be switching Hydross again right as the highest DPS begins to hit the cap.
If you want to cheese it, warriors are definitely a better choice. Lifegiving Gem, Seeds, Last Stand, and Shield Wall can add more than a minute+ of easy breathing, with healthstones/potions to boot if you have a warrior that is quick on the draw. We were able to do it that way with me as the Tauren warrior pulling directly into the nature and tanking to 0%. 22,000 HP won't save you from a max hit, but some of a warriors abilities will.

Unrelated Note - No warrior should BE a spec nowadays. It takes less than 30 minutes to farm respec costs, even if it is only for one fight, and only a week to farm the AH / Primals for Wildguard and "of Nature Protection" and "of Stamina".

The main advantage of warriors is (improved) defensive stance further reducing the incoming damage.

Keep in mind that it is less dangerous to the raid for Hydross to be in 250% nature mode for a bit than the same number in frost mode, and gear your tanks accordingly.

IMHO the most critical part of the encounter (the intended way) apart from the hefty DPS requirement is the change from nature to frost. If the aggro reset is not done right or you are really unlucky (misdirecting misses, Shield slam misses, Heroic strikes misses while a healer lands a critical heal just as he reset aggro, hydross is quite quick on his toes so even a timely fade could not be enough) you are almost certainly looking at a wipe. Because most of the raid (for us) stands outside the Frost Platform so another change (and another 4 adds) is inevitable coming. (Heavy) Snap aggro really helps here. If the druid can do that, he should be fine.

Having not max resistance should not be a problem (even if it is taxing when he has 100% mark applied). We did it the unintended way the last few times and i was the Frost warrior. To maximize the HP of the NR warrior I had to do without a Frost aura ... so ended up tanking him with 330 Frost Resi buffed at the start (and sometimes at the end) of the fight.

I have a question regarding the hydross fight, this topic seems the most suited for it:

A little background, gruul, mag, doomwalker, kazzak are all on farm, we just moved to SSC.
We are still learning this fight, we use 2 prot tanks on hydross, a hybrid warrior and a feral druid on the adds. best attempt was about 52% after 8 minutes.

The problem now is, that our geared up frost tank is away for a week.

Would it be possible to banish 2 adds, and just use 1 addtank? Adding some more frost resistance to either the warrior or the druid and use one of them to be the frost tank?

So my question is, what can we do to not let this week be a total waste progresswise.

Bypass Hydross and go for Tidewalker or Fathom-Lord.