Were I to even try, that would be me, big time. I just don't even know what's good or needed for PvP. I can only indirectly guess at what might be prized for PvP purposes when I see enormous price tags on certain jewelry or gear.
I only pvp on mages (well, 99% of the time. The other 1%, I've been on my sampire when I get raided. That always ends badly though), and you want resists (60+ for all elemental, with 70 phys), LRC, LMC, MR (I have 20+ MR on all my mage suits), etc. On one of my chars (pure mage strictly for dueling, who still needs to work poisoning), I have all of that (well, not the LMC yet, I still need to put jewels in the suit. I have enough stockpiled, I just need to go through them), plus max casting focus. I was able to do it purely through pieces looted off of Exodus and other bosses after Pub 86, in addition to 3 crafted pieces I had lying around.
The suits on my other chars are, iirc, all crafted (might have 2-3 pieces of dungeon loot in there) or vvv artifacts (Orny on my red, Crimson Cincture on my sampire)
If you want a suit, take a group (of, say, 9 people) and do Exodus for a few days. You'll get the stat scrolls if you need them, but you'll get some FANTASTIC loot too. The guild I'm in has done A LOT of Exodus runs since it's the fastest way to build suits, and we kill it in about 10 minutes - 2 tamers constantly xhealing our greaters, 3-4 mystics (RC'ing & also xhealing the pets), the rest of the group is archers/throwers.
edit: As far as expensive suits, that's, honestly, overblown. My very first pvp experience was a duel against a guy who I've been friends with since, and do you know what he wore? His FC/FCR jewelry. I could go to Fel with a suit imbued with the following: MR, LMC, LRC, and resists, and be just fine. When I pvp'd back in 2004-2005, I had two different suits - one was an LRC suit for field fighting, and the other didn't have LRC, which I used for dueling. The only additional properties my dueling suit had? Mana Regen and LMC, and maybe a couple others (Int Bonus/Mana Increase.) Granted, mana regen worked differently back then, but between two people of equal skill, a duel could have literally gone on forever (provided they didn't run out of mana)
If you're on a mage, you don't need any other properties. Anyone saying you need to spend 1 billion to compete is extremely mistaken. What you do need, however, is practice - the pvp'ers may all have expensive suits, but we worked to get them, whether it be from pvm'ing or crafting. Having that expensive suit doesn't mean you can compete with us though; against someone new to pvp, I could wear an old school GM-made suit and win. Once we got those suits (and even before, we'll upgrade suits as we go along), we were pvp'ing.
If you don't want to pvp, fine. There's nothing wrong with it. But don't say you won't do it because of the gear gap.