I turned 85 (On my shadow priest)less than a week after cata went live. Everybody was saying farm normal dungeons, then start heroics at ilvl 329. Once I have started heroics I am at 3-21 now. Almost every night I was spending 55+ minutes in queue for Heroic dungeon only to get one and most groups couldnt even make it past first boss. This was making me hate this expansion. I couldnt even grind rep/faction to buy better gear.

Then I took a step back and said I am doing this all wrong. I also had a 85 fury warrior now whom I was sticking to normal dungeons each night. I noticed how quickly I was getting rep/faction done with each faction who sells the good gear and yet I was no where on my priest yet.

I stopped trying heroics(Since most were nightmares anyways & queues were 50+ minutes each)and I farm normal dungeons for rep and still get some upgrades. I finally got my priest to an ilvl of 349 and last night I tried heroic grim batol and we went right through it with only 1 wipe. As dps priest I was easily doing 10k+ dps while spot healing. BTW using MC in some heroics is massive dps and its fun as I have gotten as high as 28k dps when grabbing a good caster type mob.

Doing normal dungeons maxxing out my faction/rep was fun again. Being normal we learn more tricks and how to work together in pugs.I did my research and discovered all the great gear these factions sell and I thought WTF am I banging my head against the wall like I had been.
This may be a bit slower than some hard core raiders prefer to do but for folks like me a working raider in a casual raiding guild it works out great.

Do you know of alternate ways to help gear up?