I fail to see how PvP gear is bad. This isn't (any previous expansion) where item budget was wasted on resilence. For a freshly dinged tank, pvp items are the best thing he can possibly use, except for fairly expensive crafts or world epics. They might not be optimal, but it's far superior to having someone tank in random quest greens.
Also, "dps gear" and "tanking gear" are quite often the same, as dodge/parry aren't very popular tanking stats anymore.