One of the things that has changed a lot in patch 5.4 was enchants and gear (heirloom and not heirloom, to be honest). What has happen is that the level restriction has been removed on most enchants.
That means that high level enchants, like Jade Spirit or Dancing Steel now can be used on heirlooms. They will, of course, not be as powerful as they are at level 90, but they will, just like heirlooms, change and become more and more powerful at each level.
There are different important things you’ll have to note:
– You can not only enchant heirloom, but every gear (almost) with any enchant. My level 18 had Pandaren’s Step on her blue PvP-boots. So if you have an enchanter who has a lot of dust which cannot sell, you can now enchant any of your alt’s gear with higher level enchant.
– Since you now can send Bound on Account items back and forth cross servers, you don’t need to have an enchanter with every enchants on each realm, you can just send the heirloom (or the BOA item) to the enchanter, enchant it and send it back (see the article about sending BOA items cross servers, here). You can also send the item cross-server to your richest character who can buy and enchant the item before sending it back. Enchanting yourself is not always the cheapest solution. If your enchanter sells Jade spirit for 2,500 gold and you can buy the same enchant on another server for 1,200, then don’t send the item to your enchanter, but to the other.
– Note that heirlooms, at the moment, can at most be lvl 85. From what I have tested, there is no difference between giving the item a Pandaria enchant or a Cataclysm enchant. If you find an equivalent (and cheaper) Cata-enchant, you can use it without any problems. Right now, on my servers, Jade Spirit and Dancing Steel are so cheap, that I don’t even use my enchanter to make them. It is cheaper to buy them from AH.
– Some powerful enchants, like high level shoulder enchants or high level leggings enchant have to be used by a level 85 characater. Don’t let that fool you: It just means that you have to use a level 85+ character to put the enchant on the shoulders or on the pants. Then you can send it back to your level 1. The enchant WILL BE active and working. It will evolve with the character just like any other enchant. You still have restriction for the scribe’s special enchant, leatherworker special enchant, etc. This doesn’t have anything to do with the character’s level, but the character’s level in a specific profession. But if you just use the high level shoulder enchants or leggings enchant that can be sold and bought from AH, it works just fine.
In all that, remember to think a bit out of the box: if your leatherworker can sell enchants more expensive that you can buy it on AH, use eventually an other character who has more gold to buy and enchant the item before sending it back.
Then, from level 10 in a battleground, you don’t have much to fear. You can see exactly how to do that in this 2.5 minutes video: