As a level 63, I would think your time would be better spent leveling to 70.
At 63, your honor gains aren't going to be as great as they are at 70 simply
because, as you stated, you're out-leveled AND out-geared by the other
players so all your honor will be pretty much objective-based, and won't
have the PVP kill honor to add to the total.  I would get to 70, THEN get
into PVP... by then, you SHOULD be at least honored with the major factions,
so you can buy the blue rep-based PVP gear, which is a really good starting
point as it gives some decent PVP stats right off the bat.  I think it was
someone on here that said they used the rep-based PVP gear as their starting
healing gear for Kara as soon as they dinged 70, which gave them a really
good +heal bonus with the full set... I think each piece costs about 20g, so
that's a pretty cheap way to go for a starting healing set as well as PVP
set that you can use to grind honor for the S1 (and possibly S2 stuff,
depending on when you hit 70).

This is the Healadin PVP set, which gives you 168 +healing, 127 resilience
(with set bouns), and a HoJ cooldown reduction of 10 seconds...  PVP is all
about beating the snot out of someone while they're helpless, as I'm sure
you've found out by now!

http://www.wowhead.com/?itemset=751

I also have 63 ret pally..and my gear just sucks at the moment :)

Biggest reason for poor survival in bg is our lowlvl and lousy gear (there is nothing wrong in our "skillz" obviously ;)).

I haven't bothered to enter bg after lvl 60, but I was thinking to give a try when I ding 64. we are losing anyway so no harm done ;)

main thing is to try to stay in groups. "strength is in numbers" or something like that. you can use bubble & stunns to buy some time to heal yourself or your allies.

you can also use bubble to attack for example enemy healer.. it'll give 12secs to hit the healer without interruptions.

I would also agree, you should just level to 70 as fast as possible. At
level 63 you are near the bottom of the food chain (60-69 and 61-70 in av).
I wouldn't expect to join a battle group and do well until you're at least
in the top four levels (so 66+) preferably the top two (68+).

Just to note, to help reduce the feeling of impotence... *Everyone* sucks at
pvp when they first play it, you begin to get better when you start to learn
more about the classes in the game and what counters you have against them.

I must confess, my knowledge of paladin pvp is woefully inadequate.
Depending on how serious you're expecting to take pvp games, I would suggest
visiting www.warcraftmovies.com and downloading some of the higher rated
paladin pvp movies. After watching some movies you may come across players
who's names stick in your head (because they impressed you). Then armory
them and compare gear/build and see if there's much you can take away that
could be beneficial to yourself.

As a healer you should be travelling around with a group of people, and they
should be trying to help you out when you get attacked. If that is just not
happening, you could try respeccing a bit more dps centric build (such as
retribution) for the last couple of levels. But I realise that you just
might not be interested in that, only really worth it if you're dying
because no-one helps or so.

It's worth it if your bags are overflowing with tokens. Before this quest
was introduced I had 100 tokens from each battleground and my mail box was
overflowing with more tokens. It can also be worth it if there's a
particular item you want. But if you're not stacked with tokens, it's
probably better to save them in case there's something you want to buy with
them.

ave

My main is a Paladin, although a Holy one. I don't know very much
about Retribution, except that it is very gear-dependent, but are you
sure PvP gear will help Vam in Kara? A lot of PvP gear does not fare
well in PvE - for example, the Holy set has zero Mp5. During very long
battles, this is very bad.

Again, I don't know Ret, but if you aren't enjoying PvP there's no
sense grinding to get a bunch of gear that might not even help you
when you could just perhaps run some instances at lvl 70 and obtain
much better gear.

I just dinged 60,000 HKs, so I've done my share of BGs. People will
disagree with me, but Paladins have it very bad in PvP right now.

I'm not familiar with Ret. It can dish out insane amounts of burst
damage, but lacks things like interrupts and a Mortal Strike effect.
Most healers will laugh at Ret Paladins.

As for Holy, in a nutshell: one school of magic + casted heals + no CC
= bad.

With one school of magic, no other class gets locked out like a
Paladin does due to things like Counterspell, Kick, etc. Your entire
UI goes gray - you can't even bubble. With no heal-over-time heals and
no instant casts save for Holy Shock (which you won't have, since
you're Ret), which is like Mana Burning yourself, our two heals are
casted. With every class in the game, except for, ironically,
Paladins, having multiple ways to interrupt, good luck trying to get a
heal off.

Paladins lack offensive skills. If another healing class sees I'm
healing: a Priest can Mana Burn, Fear and Mass Dispel me, a Druid can
Bash, Feral Charge or Cyclone me, which I can't even bubble out of,
and a Shaman can spam shocks at me, interrupting my heals, as well as
Purging my blessings, Light's Grace, etc. Seeing another healer, a
Paladin can . . . Hammer of Justice once every 60 seconds; it usually
has a 50% resist rate.

I could go on and on, but to conclude. If you're only PvPing to get
Ret gear please do some reasearch to see if it will help you. It could
very well, I don't know, my PvP gear did just fine for the first few
runs of Kara until I collected the +healing Plate stuff from there. My
point is, there's no sense doing something you're clearly not enjoying
if it won't be worth it in the long run.

Yes, being lvl 63 among 70s isn't helping. Get a PvP trinket, and the
better one if possible - it allows you to remove effects that cause
you to lose control of your character every two minutes.

Perhaps re-spec Holy for a while. Prot and Ret do just fine healing,
but you can pick up Holy Shock. It's a total mana drain and has a
ridiculous 15-second cooldown, but is the only heal we can cast
instantly and while moving. I have a macro to cast Divine Favor then
Holy Shock - that instant 3,100 heal has saved my behind plenty of
times in PvP.

Always stay with a group - Holy Paladins anyway are kind of weak 1-
on-1. You're Alliance, and this is AV which, with lots more people
than AB or EotS, makes it more difficult to notice what each
individual is doing. However, my Paladin is a Blood Elf, and at least
Horde-side, when people notice that he is healing, they will protect
him.

With better gear it will become less frustrating, although if you have
eight enemies on you, not much is going to help. My Holy Paladin in
his PvP gear has close to 400 resilience, +1,500 healing, 10K mana,
11K life, and 15K armor. He can go an entire night of BGs and not die
once. Of course he can't kill much in his own, but he can last long
enough for help to arrive.

Oh, dear. I told myself I wouldn't babble. So much for that. :P

The best thing to perhaps do here is to go to some sites like
Thottbot, Wowhead, etc., and research what drops from instances, what
is obtainable from reputation, etc., and decide for yourself.

Turn with your mouse if you don't already. I have never played a FPS
before, never strafed with the mouse, and found it really hard
learning to turn with the mouse in WoW. I still have trouble with it.

Bind all the skills you use to hotkeys so you don't have to click.
Bind, I dunno, Blessing of Freedom to "Z", Hammer of Justice to
Shift-"Z", etc., so that you can always be turning with the mouse and
hotclicking spells.

You might find the WoW PvP Forums on the WoW Forums helpful. Sometimes
amongst all the angry posts are threads that I've learned from - how
to kill X as Y posts.

Try dueling. Ask the person after what you could have done
differently. Sometimes I discuss my fights with people and say, "I
can't believe you didn't use "Whatever Skill!", and they say, "Ohhh!
That's what I was supposed to do there".

Finally, as a Holy Paladin anyway (I know you're Ret, but you're still
healing), get used to the idea that some classes will just WTFPWN you
- a Priest with Mana Burn and Mass Dispel, for example. The game is
not balanced 1-vs-1. Unfortunately, there are zero classes that
Paladins WTFPWN back.

(I'm really not trying to be a downer or discourage you - just don't
think it's entirely all you. Over in the Paladin Forums I saw a link
to some recent Arena representation charts on the Tournament server.
In 2v2, Paladins are at 8.7% vs. Druids at 139.9%; in 3v3, Paladins
are at 17.4% vs. Druids at 156.6%; and in 5v5, Paladins are at 72.7%
vs. Druids at 218.2%. So the combined representation of Paladins in
all three brackets is less than Druids in any one given bracket. The
Paladin class has glaring problems that even being the most uber
player won't help.)

If you have specific gear in mind, research how much honour and how
many tokens you'll need. If you dislike PvP, with some gear requiring
40 tokens of a certain BG, like 40 AV tokens for the trinkets, you may
find you get those 40 tokens then never go back to that BG. If you end
up continuing with PvP, see what you have more of later - honour or
tokens - and make your decision then.

--
Jill