Starter Resto Shaman PVP gear

If you are not a leatherworker, find one and make friends. Your first set of high-level pvp gear is available at lvl 78 and it's made by leatherworkers. If you are elemental or resto, your choice will be the Stormhide Set (which wowhead doesn't consider a set, so here's a link to just the chest). Unfortunately, the set lacks any spell crit rating, and has no gem slots where you can add the crit, so it's not ideal for elemental.

Compare this to the Savage Gladiator's Ringmail, which is the best Honor gear you'll get without an arena rating. The Savage Glad is better, but only because of the resilience increase and the gem sockets; it's inferior in several other respects. Considering the relative costs, you should compare the different pieces in the two sets; a mix might be the best results for your time (I'll post my choices between pieces and my reasoning when I have had a chance to make the individual comparisons).

But you've got two whole levels before you need to worry about that. First, you want the Stormhide. You sweet talk your leatherworker into agreeing to make the set for you. Now what?

Leather. Lots of leather. Unlike a lot of the BC patterns, the "non-leather" components for this set are minimal -- just 8 Eternal Water for the whole set. But boy, did they make up for it in leather costs. First, the patterns cost 3 Heavy Borean Leather apiece from a vendor just outside the leatherworking shop in Dalaran. That's 8 patterns for 24 Heavy Borean Leather... and the suit itself? Another 84 pieces of Heavy Borean Leather, for a grand total of 108 pieces of Heavy Borean Leather... ok... that doesn't sound so bad... until you do the math. 1 Heavy = 6 Regular... that's 624 Borean Leather. At one a minute, no breaks, no scraps, that's still 10 and a half hours of your skinner's time. Generally, even in Sholazar you're looking at something closer to one per 3 minutes on average (and you wondered why leather was so expensive on the Auction House...). So remember, you don't just owe your skinner a drink, you owe them a few kegs.

Up next? Early and (relatively) easy-to-get enchanments, as well as filling those other gear slots.