4DPS, the theory, the understanding, the inane fun.

I actually went to the gym last Thursday, thereby heralding
the beginning of what I hope to be a strict Tuesday / Thursday workout
schedule. The problem that lies within said schedule has much to do with the
saying “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” In my case, the flesh is
god damned sore. It’s Saturday night
and my abs hurt far more than the time I pedaled my bike 60 mph downhill
straight into a car door (note, the car door was open the whole time; I
believed myself to have latent psychic ghost powers that awakened when I was in
mortal peril. I may have been wrong in assuming so.).

As it is, I cannot laugh or lie down straight; this is due
to the fact that I approached my old training schedule as if I had not had a
four month hiatus. The pain contained within my body suggests that I had not
actually taken such a break; in reality, evidence points to the hypothesis that
my carcass was storing ‘the hurt’
like some kind of solar powered battery, waiting for the precise moment to
implode. My girlfriend takes great delight in dropping a cat on my stomach as
well, so apparently the world is having a great laugh at my expense.

---

With a few 5v5 matrices out of the way, I thought the best
area to move on to would be the lower brackets. I would have embarked on such
an epic journey, yet I felt that given my experience with 4DPS teams, I should
potentially speak a little bit more on the general concept. Given that I only
gave a cursory examination of my favorite team, it doesn’t do it justice to
simply remark that it’s “fuggin’ hard.” A lot of teams give 4DPS the ‘scrub’
label, but I’d really like to clear up that misconception; this is akin to a
boy who brings his mother to school because I told him his momma was so fat
that when she jumped for joy, she got
stuck. He informed his mother as such, and I got beaten up by a 42 year old
woman in front of my class. I hope to accomplish the same kind of thing, minus
the mother beating, but with more “proving you wrong-ness.”

What is 4DPS?

It’s essentially grabbing 4 DPS players and attempting to
rush down their initial target within the first 20 seconds of the fight. The
idea goes like this: If my team is trying to kill a player with 3 DPS, imagine
how much faster we could accomplish said killing if we had an extra attacker!

Quite simply, this is the equivalent of pulling your goalie
(ice hockey here, please keep up) and playing with a bolstered forward line.
The problem inherent with this goes right along with pulling your goalie:
should any team notice that you have your goalie pulled, and they are a smart
bunch of players, they will simply exploit your team’s weakness of not having a
goalie. You can accomplish said exploitation by simply blasting the puck at the
opponent’s net, hoping for an easy goal. Other such embarrassments include giving
the puck to their goalie and trying to get him to score, thereby enabling the
irony to fully run its course.

Do you understand the analogy? There’s a very important
reason as to why a hockey team doesn’t pull their goalie in the first 30
seconds of the game. The goalie offers far too many benefits, whereas an extra
offensive player offers less. In reality, this is the same for 4DPS vs 2345.
With the former, you have a team that constantly pulls its goalie and plays ultra
aggressive; with the latter teams, you have solid, well rounded matrices that
are capable of playing well defensively as well as offensively.

So why do people
complain about 4DPS?

The reason for this is a lack of understanding. When a
hockey team pulls their goalie, do you think that the defending team should
suddenly attempt to win a control game against a team with an extra attacker?
No, because at that point you are ultimately playing the same game as the
opposing team, except they have one more man and you have a goalie. In this
same sense, one should not simply turtle it up and attempt to ‘absorb’ as many
shots as possible, because unless your goalie is amazing, something is bound to
slip through. Ultimately you must exploit the opposing team’s weakness: their
lack of a core defense.

In WoW terms, a 4DPS team is truly incapable of playing
defensively. Much like how a hockey team with a pulled goalie attempts to
pressure and control the puck in the enemy zone, the 4DPS team does the same.
We apply pressure to the other team in the hopes that by pressuring, we may
exert control over the flow of the battle. Once you allow us this control, it
essentially becomes that much more likely that we’ll score a goal.

 What many
inexperienced teams don’t understand is how to exploit a 4DPS team’s weakness. You
may assume that one must heal to full, potentially interrupting something and
something else, but then you’re simply playing right into the 4DPS’s plans. My
team has taken wins off of guys like BOPBOPBOP
when they ran their proper roster, and this was prior to the gear swap change being implemented.

At the time, I ran UA Lock / UA Lock / S. Priest / Mage /
Druid, so you can also tell how Shadow Resist would screw us over faster than
Feral Druid buffs in arena (zing). Our secret was that we simply rushed up and
set up our offense before they could. At that point, they could only play
reactively by trying to interrupt and heal, but when you do this, you’ll
eventually fall behind to our superior control, and then lose.

The proper counter to 4DPS actually lies in counter-control
and preventing the control. If you should pressure key areas, IE the healer,
you’ll force the 4DPS team to react to that. Once they do, you’ve ultimately
got them playing your game.
Constantly work to prevent those CCs from landing, or make cleansing CCs your
top priority, and place heavy emphasis on the attack. By constantly pressuring
and preventing the opposing team from truly taking control, you’ll simply walk
right into a ‘free goal’ type of thing. This is essentially the key to
exploiting the severe weakness of a 4DPS; we
cannot recover.

In reality, I truly believe that 4DPS is one of the weakest
‘mainstream’ matrices out there. We’re analogous to riding a unicycle at the
Tour de France. Sure, it’s fun as hell, but you’re ultimately inhibiting
yourself in an arena that doesn’t reward self-handicaps. Should other teams
truly understand how to mitigate the 4DPS, we lack the ability to recover from
that. The entirety of the fight is dependent upon our critical control in the
first 30 seconds of the fight. Anything thereafter is simply clean up for Team
A or B. Any team running 2 healers is truly taking the advantage by maximizing
themselves defensively, yet continuing to mount an impressive offensive power.

The Theory of 4DPS

I am, however, still optimistic about 4DPS. It’s not because
I believe it will soon gain far greater merit with 2.3, on the contrary, I
believe that 4DPS is suffering another nerf in the long evolution of arena. No,
I am optimistic about 4DPS because of
its razor sharp nature. I truly enjoy the 4DPS game because it caters to a fun
arena play style that really punishes
a lax team, both the players involved and the players opposed. Where 2345 can
mediocre their way up, or 2345 Warlock variation can simply outlast, playing
the 4DPS requires concise theory in application, and is really a joy to behold
when things go perfectly.

4DPS is not simply the theory of rushing down someone; you
must ultimately temper it with a perfect gilt of control and organization.
While in the sub 1900 ratings, you can simply spam cooldowns and hope something
explodes, a high rated 4DPS team must be extremely flexible in its targets, and
must be prepared for anything when it comes to control. Each win is not so much
“how much damage did we do,” but more “how long was x controlled? How
coordinated were we?”

Ultimately you must press aggressively upon a team before
they can truly bring their own pressure to bear; trust me when I say that your
team is much less capable of handling pressure than any other duo-healer
variations. I’ve found that the times when I’ve yelled at my team to rush a
specific player, we do exponentially better than if we sit back or get
surprised by a rush of their own. 4DPS is truly predicated upon maintaining the
initial momentum and utilizing it to generate insurmountable pressure.

With a 4DPS team, you must absolutely know that your
teammates are of at least a decent caliber. Should you have a weak player, it
will truly show, and potentially could be exploited as well. Only bring people whom you can trust to
do their jobs (at least competently), and only
bring classes that you believe can control or contribute exceptional amounts of
damage. I prefer to vary my CCs as much as possible, to prevent DR immunities,
but you may value the importance of the Double UA Lock / Shadow Priest
offensive, it’s really all opinion. Just be sure to enable your play style to
support whatever matrix you run.

In the end, however, please note that playing 4DPS at the
highest levels is probably one of the most lop-sided teams in terms of
weaknesses. Innovation is key to surviving in a league full of stellar goalies;
whereas you’re simply playing 6 players from the beginning. Note this,
understand it, and enjoy your razor thin lines between wins and losses.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to curl up into the fetal
position and attempt to ignore the pain emenating from my gorgeus, sculpted
abs.

Report Post