Best way to gear up quickly in 5.4

[-Psypher-]

After seeing that my raid team is overbooked on melee and spriest DPS is lackluster at the moment, I decided on leveling my mage to 90 and getting geared to join my guild's 25m in SoO. That being said, I've been out of the raid game for the length of Mists, only having done a ton of LFRs and a handful of ToT normal modes (on my ret paladin, who has a 502 ilvl and was middle of the pack for my raid's DPS).

That said, are there any tips, tricks, or otherwise (I'll be doing all the Timeless Isle stuff when 5.4 drops), to getting some decent gear to start normal mode SoO? In Cata we could buy previous tier stuff with JP, allowing us to use the entirety of our VP on current upgrades. It appears that is no longer the case in Mists; so what should I save/spend my JP on, how should I plan to use my runes and coins, and generally speaking, if you were in my position with a quest-green and instance-blue-wearing, fresh 90 mage, how would you get prepped, and what items would you want to get, in as little as time as possible for SoO normal, then heroic?

I'd like to say money isn't an issue, and perhaps it won't be after I sell some TCG mounts, but if those don't sell quick enough I won't be able to rely on crafted BoEs. Thanks!

[royals]

After seeing that my raid team is overbooked on melee and spriest DPS is lackluster at the moment, I decided on leveling my mage to 90 and getting geared to join my guild's 25m in SoO. That being said, I've been out of the raid game for the length of Mists, only having done a ton of LFRs and a handful of ToT normal modes (on my ret paladin, who has a 502 ilvl and was middle of the pack for my raid's DPS).

That said, are there any tips, tricks, or otherwise (I'll be doing all the Timeless Isle stuff when 5.4 drops), to getting some decent gear to start normal mode SoO? In Cata we could buy previous tier stuff with JP, allowing us to use the entirety of our VP on current upgrades. It appears that is no longer the case in Mists; so what should I save/spend my JP on, how should I plan to use my runes and coins, and generally speaking, if you were in my position with a quest-green and instance-blue-wearing, fresh 90 mage, how would you get prepped, and what items would you want to get, in as little as time as possible for SoO normal, then heroic?

I'd like to say money isn't an issue, and perhaps it won't be after I sell some TCG mounts, but if those don't sell quick enough I won't be able to rely on crafted BoEs. Thanks!

You have mentioned most things, but I'll make you a little list of what I do w/ my alts.
1: Craft Everything you can, if you have the cash you can skip a lot of the next steps.
2: Change your JP into honor and buy the current season honor gear.
3: Do a few arenas (1 - 2 weeks depending on skill) and get the pvp weapon. (There is no 502 craftable wep for mages unfortunately).
4: Timeless Isle, Farm a rare, get a Gui-Lai Cache key and run your solo scenario. (Do this BEFORE running MSV/HOF/TOES LFR). You should have 12-20 coins if you run the scenario efficiently.
5: Find a Charm farm group in Barrens, get a bunch of charms, go to ToT LFR and /pray.
6: Lastly, if you raid group is serious about you main swapping, they should carry you through normal/heroic ToT immediately.

Thats all I can think of for now.