You can actually still get into the instances with some crappy gear, since the filter is strictly on ilevel and whether the item can be equipped, not whether it's any good. You can just fill your bag (or even bank) with quest items and BoEs for other specs or lower armor levels and it'll still count the best ilevel towards your avg ilevel. So while leveling if you are having trouble finding a high ilevel item of a slot, don't get rid of the alternative quest items you won't wear that you've picked up till you do, since it'll help you get into the early dungeons. This is what we had to do on beta initially when the quest rewards weren't in yet to meet the minimum dungeon requirements.

Also Frost, have you looked at all into the PvP gear options for PvE? For most users it won't be worth hassling with, but given the gun shortage situation I've been looking at whether the first tier PvP gun might be worth picking up, since I think only the second tier will require rating. I'm not sure what the honor costs will be, but for dwarves it looks like it's actually more dps to use that than the ilevel 359 epic bow, since there is only 72 wasted resilience which would be made up for by the 1% crit you gain.