One of the main reasons I haven't touched my main again since returning (the other one being that I made use of a free transfer to get him from a PvP to a PvE realm, and in so doing lost his name, and I haven't decided on a new name yet). For the time being I'm mostly playing lower level alts.

Two answers to this, depending on your spec and your skill level:

Answer One:
The first is to spend a few thousand gold to buy all the crafted PVP gear for your class and run Hour of Twilight heroics and Raid Finder until you can replace most of it. I don't want to start a debate on the ethics of using PVP gear in PVE, but if you're a DPS class and can still put out decent numbers, this is a reasonable way to get going. DO NOT do this if you are a tank or healer... it won't end well.

Answer Two:
I'll pretend you *just* hit 85 and have crappy quest gear. Your goal is to hit ilvl 353 as fast as you can so you can get into the new Hour of Twilight heroics.

- Buy cheap ilvl 378 BoEs on the AH
- Buy crafted ilvl 359 armor and ilvl 365 weapons (these can be expensive)
- Do enough questing in Hyjal to unlock the Molten Front dailies; one day of those dailies will open a vendor who should have at least one ilvl 365 item you can use
- Go to Hyjal and complete the Thrall questline for a 365 cloak

This will probably get your ilvl in the 330s. Here you have a few options:
1. Queue the 85 normals to farm JP
2. Queue the regular Cata heroics to farm JP and VP
3. Farm BGs for honor to convert to JP

Option 1 is super easy, but slow and boring. I don't recommend option 2 because most of the people in those dungeons are also too low on gear for the new heroics, so the failure rate is high enough again to make the return per time invested very low. If you go with option 3, you might want to pick up the crafted PVP set for your sanity's sake.

Once you reach 353 ilvl, run the Hour of Twilight heroics for JP, VP and 378 drops.

Once you reach ilvl 372, you can run Raid Finder for more stuff, and you're also geared enough to not be a huge burden in normal mode DS.

@Smashbolt:

When I'm back tanking, if I see a DPS or Healer with more than a single piece of PvP gear, I will initiate a vote kick. If it fails, I will drop group.

I'm not going to carry a player that didn't do at least the minimal effort to get proper PvE gear; getting healers that didn't last a trash pull or DPSers that were badly out-DPSed by the tank was a large part of the reason I got so burned out with the LFD at the start of Cataclysm.

I might change my opinion, but only when/if a whole randomly assembled (which means no fancy communication) PvP-geared group can actually finish a LFD Heroic without problems. MoP seems to be bringing PvE performance improvements for PvP gear, so we might actually see that, though I'm not holding my breath for it.

You really inspect every player in your pug to see if they have pvp gear? You really don't even give them a chance? I don't condone pvp gear for pve, and in fact have never worn a single piece of pvp gear, but sometimes pvp gear is the best choice out of the available options. Would you be fine if they were wearing quest blues instead?

As long as they are there to replace those pvp items, nd they are not causing the group to fail, then it is fine.

@Puntable:

I don't need to inspect everyone; I have addons to do that for me (and to automatically point to me if the player has improper stats for PvE, such as Resilience, or for his spec).

Saying that I would kick players for having two pieces of PvP gear was perhaps an oversimplification. If, despite the stat points lost to resilience, the character's stats were still above what would be expected for a minimally geared player, in full PvE gear and with at least the cheap gems and enchants, that actually meets the iLvl requirement for queuing, I would have no problem keeping the player. If his stats are below that minimum, though, it's either him or me.

Getting the minimum iLvl, in proper PvE gear, to start running Heroics is easy enough. More so because JP gear - which can be obtained from running normals - is quite potent right now. If the player can't even be bothered to get that minimum PvE gear, I don't want him in the same group as me.

Just as an addendum: I otherwise don't kick players for having low gear. If it's the proper PvE gear for his spec, with at least cheap gems and enchants, and it actually met the iLvl requirement - even if only barely - it's good enough gear in for me; in this case, I would actually try to block any attempt at kicking him based on his gear. What I can't condone is exploiting that garbage of a iLvl check to enter dungeons with improper (PvP, wrong spec, etc) gear.

@darkwalker-- Currently my healer main is wearing PvP shoulders (403 Cataclysmic) and until last week was wearing a 390 PvP helm. (Her token dropped, hurrah!) If not for those she would have a 359 helm and 353 shoulders. Her other gear is mostly 378+. Would you honestly kick her for having two pieces of PvP gear in slots that are hard to fill that, even ignoring resilence, are better than her best available PvP pieces?

Similarly, my DK tanked in the (mastery/resil). PvP helm for a few weeks; his existing helm was very badly itemized. Losing expertise and gaining a ton of mastery is fine for a DK. And, the last time I checked, bears could get away with using PvP gear; the increased agi and stamina over dungeon gear trumps the loss of secondaries because half the scondaries on leather are worthless, anyway.

I say if someone is in PvP gear and putting out good DPS, let them stay. The new 5-mans are tuned for a group in 353 gear; a guy in 371 crafted and a guy in Zul gear will be close enough to get by. For melee, the limiter's going to be the weapon, anyway; I had a guy the other day with mostly epic gear and 346/333 as weapons because he'd had bad RNG and didn't have the gold for a pair of the 365s. Predictably, the guy in heroic DS gear complained he was getting carried for only doing 14k with his blue melee weapons. Because he was pulling 20k in quest greens at the start of the expansion....

Until 4.3 dropped, my warrior was completely decked out in i371 PvP gear, which was the BiS gear for anyone who could never see the inside of a raid. I replaced it all in the Twilight 3 and heard not one single complaint in that time because the goal for a DPSer is to crank out DPS--which that gear did in spades, especially with the +strength set bonuses.

So nyyyaaah.