The Ret Paly and the DPS Warrior share the same gear pool and are the two hardest sets to improve.

I can't tell you how true I'm finding this to be.
I've been trying to help Arachne get better gear and I keep going: "Gear, where are you? Where is the love for DPS warrior?"

Apparently there is very little...

Take a look at Chaves' gear on the armory. I think this is your best option before ZA or 25 mans. There are some boots in Kara but the rest is just trinkets, rings and necklaces.

Chaves is 1850 unbuffed AP and 21% unbuffed crit. Not as great as a kara-geared DPS class but he can still hang in there. With badge loot I think he will be over 2K AP, 22-23% crit and ignore about 800 armor. That requires about 225 badges.

Chaves is a Master Hammersmith and uses Deep Thunder right now. If I got a drop that was close to that then I would probably switch to Master Armorsmith to make the chest piece. If you really want to gear well pre-Kara you need to take the Engineering / Blacksmithing route. However there are some great weapons in Kara to get for a DPS warrior / Ret Paly.

and uses Deep Thunder right now.

Lux, don't you use that too? I forget what you were telling me about when your Magic Wand broke down...

Where is the love for DPS warrior? Apparently there is very little...

This is sorta true. I was planning on keeping Nak a fury warrior, but there really isn't the wide choice of gear that other classes have. There is gear out there... but not as much as other classes or specs.

If you spend some time at www.maxdps.com you can find plenty of phat lewts.

As an example... I'll attach the gear lists I put together from that site. This is everything up to T5 level gear. It includes faction rewards, crafting, quests, world drops, and instance drops. The one thing it doesn't state is if the item is a heroic mode only drop.

What you'll see on that list is where the item comes from, the name, and the calculated DPS that item is worth.

Cool, Raps, I'll pass that along to Arachne... She will have fun figuring out where she needs to go next...

There is an even wider selection of DPS gear if you choose to fight mail and leather wearers for it. The list I put together is strictly plate only items.

EDIT: Sorry... didn't mean to threadjack the Shaman talk