25 person max raid size for expansion

[Monkey]

Quel'Serrar: 2.0 speed main-hand sword, 52.5 dps, +12 sta, on hit: +13 defense, +300 armor for 10 secs - requires epic book buyable from AH or findable in Dire Maul, plus a successful Onyxia run

Blackfury: 2.1 speed polearm, 62.6 dps, +35 str, +15 sta, +10 fire resist, +1% crit - requires 7 cores which can be purchased from the AH at around 100-200 gold apiece

*shrug* Evidently Blizzard regards the effort of raiding to be comparable to one person spending about 1500 gold or the equivalent amount of effort.

This initially made sense and now I'm just confused to the point of nitpicking (do you see what you've driven me to do?!)--Quel'Serrar is a 1-handed and Blackfury is a 2-handed. While Blackfury might be the equal of a raiding weapon, shouldn't it be compared it to a 2-handed raiding weapon? How about Earthshaker:

Earthshaker: 3.5 speed mace, 62.6 dps, +22 AP,
Chance on hit: Knocks down all nearby enemies for 3 sec. Drops from Magmadar, the 2nd boss in Molten Core.

That seems like a more parallel comparison than Quel'Serrar, we now return to your regularly scheduled thread.

[Warlock]

If you can get a TUF, you can get a Lobotomizer. My Warrior tanks (and farms since getting Shield Slam) with one. He was Fury and is now Prot so the lack of a weapon specific skill for daggers was never an issue. It does lack defensive stats but the extra DPS it has over defensive blue 1H choices is enough for me to prefer it for extra threat and rage.