Advice on first frost badge buy

[pinotnoir]

I am getting belts when I hit 60 on my team.

[Dorffo]

Primordial Saronite for the raiding main =p

/whips saronite slaves

[Mercurio]

i dont do pugs in icc as its hard as hell on my server to get into one without 5k+ GS and achi my toons are sat at 4.8k-4.9k GS except the resto thats at just over 5k and TBH i realy dont have the time to pug each toon solo and as a group is ofc out of the question. i do the daily and the weekly and voa for frost badges and use the tank and healers triumph for crusader orbs for gold to get crafted bits as they have nothing but pvp gear to gain from triumphs
its all pretty slow going but i think im doing ok as with some of the things i've read about peoples troubles with shaman dps struggling but my shamans do well

I would download the add-on "Underachiever" - automatically makes it look like any achievement you link has been completed by you. That's half the battle in finding PuG groups, doesn't help you with the gear score part of it though.

The contribution to gear score was one of the first considerations I had for initial frost emblem purchases before my toons were over 5K. Helped get them into PuGs (and access to better gear) sooner. Most people are so blinded by gear score that they don't care if you have items that are better for your DPS/tanking/healing - they'd rather see you in items that cause your performance to degrade but make your gear score higher!