Ten Obvious Things To Do Against 4DPS (you'll still lose anyways)

Ten Things To Slow 4DPS:

1) Counterspell offensive casts: Prioritize -- Unstable Affliction, Frostbolt, Lightning bolt. You should be counterspelling the target that your other teammates cannot as easily interrupt. While counterspelling a mage's frost tree might not seem as strong as taking out a lock's shadow or a shaman's nature tree because a mage can use other spell trees, these are much less efficient and have almost no burst potential.

2) You need to mana burn to win if they have a warlock. (which they will) You CANNOT just outheal their damage as warlock and WE mage DPS is EXTREMELY efficient and both classes can put out huge damage for a long time. However, the mage is extremely susceptible to mana burn as he needs to be out in the open to do damage to his target. If WE can be killed quickly, you land a few good burns on the mage, and deny evocate, you've taken away the mage's damage. (The mage is still a real pain with r1 poly and nova)

3) Classic+FG Lock is the best 4DPS counter. (that is a normal team) Put the FG on the mage and keep mage occupied with tongues spam. Mana burns on the shadowpriest and CC spam on their other DPS. Kill WE as mage summons them. You can afford to have your warrior play quite evasively.

4) Don't be overly picky with target choice for your warrior. He should be on the lock, shadowpriest, or rogue. Often he'll be getting snared and stunned so much he can't get on the optimal target, either split DPS at this point or assist on the target that he can actually hit. Hanging out in defensive with 2h out between spell reflects is going to be a lot better than sword and board against most teams. Depending on your matrix, it is certainly possible to get an early kill against 4DPS given your warrior doesn't take himself out of the fight too much.

5) 4DPS teams tend to rush to land AE fears to burn fear wards. Anticipate the rush and position yourself to avoid losing your fear wards unnecessarily. It's often better to meet the 4DPS team midway than let them rush into you, again don't eat novas and fears recklessly.

6) Paladins on 4DPS team to use sacrifice VERY liberally especially after they bubble. (which they tend to do early) If you're in the midgame and the mana war is starting too look bad for your team, consider killing their paladin who might be <50% health just from sacrifice damage. (He won't have time to heal himself the whole game most likely)

7) Shadowpriests are the target of choice for most teams that fight against 4DPS teams. The thought is that you reduce the SP's damage dramatically by making SWD prohibitively dangerous and shadowpriests have no interruption resistance on mind flay or mind blast. While this is true, I always considered the important shadowpriest responsibilities on a 4DPS team to be: Dispels, Misery, Silence, Mass Dispel, and then finally damage. A good shadowpriest can do a lot of these tasks while taking focus (plus has decent physical mitigation) and perhaps the best outcome of focusing a shadowpriest early is not landing a kill but putting them in a position where they're eating tons of mana burns or are being forced to run away and neglect their dispelling role. Keep pressure on SPs but don't recklessly chase.

8) If poly is on DR, and CS is down, nova is not bad against mages chain casting -- they'll frequently Blink out either due to habit, to stay in casting range, or to avoid needless lance damage.

9) Cyclone is really nasty against 4DPS obviously -- if you have a hunter pet or felguard, cyclone the mage and then put the pet on them. Cyclone still strips players of their auras and its unlikely the pally will spend a global reapplying Concentration Aura. Against most 4DPS team, expect their mage or lock to be on controlling the pally healing and either silences or earthshocks to be on your druid trying to limit Cyclone spam. Fake cast and use range well.

10) Position! 4DPS depends on position requirements. The mage needs to be in the open with LoS on you and needs to be outside of shatter combo "dead zone." The lock requires LoS to get up UA to project his shadowpriest's DoTs. If they make it obvious who their target is (your warrior), keep him out of the fight for the first few seconds and ensure he can get the charge and avoid eating massive caster damage spam.