The furious gladiator sets are available with triumph badges, and the lower tiers of gear are still available for conquest, valor, etc. However, unless you have a huge stock of lower tier badges, given how easily available triumphs are right now, you're going to want to get furious.

There's a wide assortment of gear available for wintergrasp tokens--essentially two pieces of gear plus trinkets per season. Some, such as the pants and ring, are equivilant to furious gladiator gear. Other pieces, such as the helm or boots, are only the equivalent of hateful gear. The trinkets are also either a great way to pick up resilience (such as the Flow of Knowledge) or a PVP trinket effect with stats instead of resiliance (such as the Titan-Forged Rune of Audacity).

As for other gear you can purchase with honor but no arena rating, all of the furious off set pieces are available to you. Additionally, 1000 rating can be obtained just by getting invited to a team over 1000 rating. Given that these are a dime a dozen and you can probably buy one from someone if you don't have a friend willing to invite you to a team just for the sake of the rating. This could allow you to buy some pieces of furious gear for a combination of points and honor.

In my opinion, if you are interested in getting the most for your time without stepping into arena at all, do the following:
-Spend Wintergrasp Marks of Honor on trinkets first, then ring, then pants.
-Buy a set of furious arena gear with your badges. If you just need to spend old badges, I'd consider using them on deadly but don't bother buying hateful or savage gear at all at this point
-Use your honor points for furious offset pieces.

You can't get the previous seasons weapons, offhands, or wands. Make due with the best PVE options you have.

That being said, the current season's off set pieces can be purchased with honor and have reasonably low ratings requirements. If you're dead set against arenaing, buy furious, otherwise consider doing a few arenas and picking up the best available gear.