vathdaar wrote:shaman gear for pvp works fine since shamans stack their max out of spell crit (especially at the start where there is not a reliable source of mail armor sets).
so pretty much r10 shoulders and gloves together with r13 chest,boots, pants and head is the best MAIL armor you ll get for elemental in pretty much the first 6 months of the server. Later on you can get the AB spell crit dagger and some nice shield and there you go.
To answer your question, yes, shaman pvp gear is good, but can get better mixed with other SP gear later on.
Pros: its mail, it has VERY GOOD stamina (r13 gear), will give you good survivavility, which as a shaman you need to not be "papermade" and get blown by any melee.
Cons: It has low amount of spell damage. (its good at the start, gets worse with BWL but still suitable, and especially outdated at AQ/naxx).
If he wants to go full damage Ele PvP (solo play) thats fine. But if he wants to premade with a 30/0/21 spec He can do better with some spelldamage for backup heals. However like you said right off the bat 1.4 and by only doing PvP + without gimping into cloth.
But you will indeed fall behind if you only PvP. T2 is nice for PvP aswell (5 pieces will give you both a chain heal buff and increased crit).
Ofcourse being a hybrid class and having only 1 PvP set in Vanilla it is geared towards all 3 specs at the same time. This would be great if we could spec 31/31/31 but ofc we can't. You can pick up the PvP set pieces that suit your spec and fill those up with raid items.
Once AQ40 comes, like vathadaar said, you will start lagging behind seriously. Especially if you will go for the solo play instead of the hybrid elemental/resto play.
Its just the way the cookie crumbles for hybrids in vanilla sadly