I have a question about protret pvp, I know about most things but my partner who has been at 2.4k in 2's with another protret tells me I should try to get DBW, I'm not an expert at pvp'ing, but I have been a hardcore pve'er, and I know what the stats are and why they're not really that awesome for me (or are they?). Currently I'm using heroic whispering fanged and battlemasters with AP (going to replace this one with deaths verdict as soon as I can, I'm human).

That's basically my question, DBW, or death's verdict (aka death's choice).

I've been playing ProtRet in battlegrounds for a while now in both my full Prot PvE tanking set (average iLevel around 255) and also in my PvP set (mixture of 232 and 264 PvP gear plus a few PvE pieces). Either way, I use my normal PvE Prot tanking talent build.

My PvP set includes two T10 tanking pieces (head and shoulders) and a 251 Ret chestpiece from ICC10, but the rest is PvP gear. Regardless of sets, I use the same libram, Libram of Valiance, for the strength proc, and the trinket, DMC: Greatness, again for the strength proc.

Even with my PvP set having 730-something resilience, I don't think my survivability is that much better, even against casters.

At this point, I'm still not really sure what I should be doing gear-wise. I've tried maximizing strength, I've tried maximizing resilience, I've tried maximizing stamina. It all seems to play more or less the same from what I see. I've never had that "WOW" moment where I just knew that I made the right gearing choice.

Do you have any other specific gearing suggestions along the same lines as "use T10 prot gloves and shoulders"?

What about PvE ret gear vs PvP gear?

What about ProtRet talent builds specifically for PvP?

Any "must have" glyphs?

Im new and dont know where else to ask this, but its pally pvp related so im assuming here. I apologize if I am wrong. I have macros that when you hold alt it switches it to a different move, but i want to be able to do that for moves that are auto targeted for my partner. For example
/cast [target=Dog] [nomod:alt] Hand of freedom; [mod:alt] [target=dog] Hand of protection
I know its wrong so please dont tell me that, I am trying to find out how to do macros like that. I have searched pages and pages of forums and other sites without any new knowlege really gained and hoped someone could help here. Thank you!

The modifier and target parts need to be in the same brackets and you don't need the mod part if there is no modifier.

Your macro should work like this.

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:alt, target=dog] Hand of Protection; [target=dog] Hand of Freedom

I would like the experienced PvP Ret paladins (I played Retribution Paladin last time in PvP when there were still ranks, almost got to Rank 10 but then I switched to Fury Warrior to be in MC,BWL & AQ40 raids) to comment on whether they like the changes Cataclysm brought/ is about to bring to the class.

I think it should require more skill to compete than in Wotlk, but it should be funnier, too; which is good, finally being able to feel like a proper Warrior of the Light so to speak with many skills at disposal. Something I've been waiting for a very long time.

Also, I'd like an opinion on the basic Ret PvE build at 85. It should be like this Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft, the new talent design from Blizzard means every class in every spec does take some PvP abilities anyway; my question however is, how gimped would this be in PvP in comparison to a proper, PvP focused Ret build? I am in a pretty small guild, so my dual spec could be busy with either Prot or Holy; of course there is always respeccing, but I never was a huge money maker in my WoW history...What do you think?

Danath, while it could still prove pretty effective for larking around, your build lacks 2 key talents for mobility: Guardian's Favour and Acts of Sacrifice.

The 4 points change your 6 second duration/25 second cooldown Hand of Freedom to a 10 second duration/20 second cooldown. With the ability to dispel magic removed this is the only method of getting out of snares.

Your best off just pratting around in Battlegrounds and gauging your mobility vs various classes. If your getting kited into oblivion, you may want to pick up a more PvP focused spec.

BV is no longer relevant, AS scales best off of strength now. Ret PvP gear is optimal. Generally, people stack +20 str gems as all of prot's abilities scale off of it thanks to TbtL, personally i take a survivability approach and gem for resilience, while using str/resil and hit/resil gems to grab the str socket bonuses.

As for 2pc t10, it is not worth it, the resilience and damage stats from full ret pvp will prove far more versatile than improved HotR, which you should only be using if your target is wearing plate.

Until the shattering we could use instant heals (Holy Shock and WoG) in conjunction with Protecter of the Innocent and be uninterruptable. Chain silence and stuns were pretty much the only way of killing us. It was great fun being Mana burned, as we could heal ourselves with one HP WoGs every 2 seconds which would give a full power secondary heal from PotI. Feel their frustration !
This has been nerfed in two ways. Firstly PotI doesn't trigger on self heals. Secondly, Blessed Life, which gave the HPs from being hit once every 2 seconds has been nerfed to once every 8 seconds. The fun of OP has left us.
We will now have to sit in the back again and avoid being targeted so that we can cast our heals and avoid interrupts. Aura mastery is a must to avoid silences from interrupts. It was great fun before when I would charge into the middle of any fight and hope I would get hit to take pressure off the dpsers and generate a ton of free healing.

Ohh well. They were bound to catch up with it eventually.

After the 4.0 patch, holy pallies seemed to own in battlegrounds. With all the changes to ret, I'm contimplating going pvp holy/pve holy come cata. Did holy still own in PTR battlegrounds? I wasnt able to get beta to find out.

See my comment above yours. We Holy Pallies have been severely (but rightly) nerfed. I have heard that Glyph of Long Word could be the answer though. I have heard rumour that the HoT ticks from the glyph trigger Protector of the Innocent (as well as the original heal), which could make single HP WoG spam on various team mates a great way of defending yourself through a silence or stun routine. I need to check this out though.