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Unlike most people I pride myself on having a low apm rather than a higher one. It just brings me great satisfaction to look at a game afterwords and see that I beat someone with a much higher apm than me.
Anyways, I recently I switched from zerg to protoss, and I got around to watching one of my replays. When I clicked the APM counter I was extremely amused. So I decided to show the game with some images.
At this point in the game you may notice my opponent has a slight lead on me, he has assigned all of his hotkeys and is around 10x my APM.
Ok, 9 minutes into the game and things are still looking bleak for me, my apm has caught up slightly but I am still feeling a large hockey deficit. It seems impossible that my lone nexus hockey can stand up to his veritably army of hotkeys.
Against all odds I managed to pull a victory, I was able to pull the apm difference down to 2x as well as utilize two hotkeys at the same time.
I wasn't sure this was ok to post in the sc2 main forums so I put it in blogs.
 
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Glad you posted this, we need more discussion of APM on this site, I fear we are losing sight of our priorities.
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This is just bizarre, why not use more hotkeys? Seems like you're just hamstringing yourself with a strange desire to prove you can win without them. Also The Importance of Being Earnest.
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You have higher APM than me, you noob.
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High APM does not mean better player or should win from someone with lower APM.
So I can't really see the point of this blog. But still gratz that you win though.
The reason most people have high apm is because their muscle memory has allowed them to do so or the newbies who spam keys.
I used to micro alot early game but I've spent since a few weeks considerably more time focussing on macro and forget micro to improve my macro mechanics although I haven't played a week or so.
As a result my APM improved from 100 to 170 because I keep holding my macro the same while thinking more/doing more micro/harassment play. I don't have to watch my base alot anymore on keeping my production going on because my muscle memory allowed me to do this. Still need to figure out a way to force myself on watching minimap.
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Priding yourself on low APM is detrimental to improving. Taking pride in something means you are happy with it. Being happy with low APM leads to a mental block against trying to play faster. With that mental block in place it is harder to start assigning more things to hotkeys and cycling through them to check on the progress of things. It will seem like "useless apm that only spammers do" in your head, where it is actually extremely helpful and essential to improving.
Just something to think about.
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not impressive... i have much lower apm and use no hotkeys
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I think high legitimate APM is important, but artificially high APM via spamming is not. To the point where it warms you up and keeps you at a tempo, sure, but the player you're playing against went from 250 to 140. His legitimate APM didn't slow down, he simply returned to his normal ~100apm that averaged against his initial spamming. Similarly, because you didn't do even a slight amount of spamming, your average of ~100 legitimate actions were averaged against your early-game 20.
Pride yourself all you want, but all you've accomplished is the art of not spamming.
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You make not spamming sound like such a terrible thing....
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On November 05 2010 18:00 Hurricane wrote:
Priding yourself on low APM is detrimental to improving. Taking pride in something means you are happy with it. Being happy with low APM leads to a mental block against trying to play faster. With that mental block in place it is harder to start assigning more things to hotkeys and cycling through them to check on the progress of things. It will seem like "useless apm that only spammers do" in your head, where it is actually extremely helpful and essential to improving.
Just something to think about.
100% agree. OP you should get off your high horse and stop thinking that high apm is obnoxious and showing off.
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I don't know how many APM threads there has to be. Who cares who has however APM. Just get the job done and try to "win". Some people feel the need they need to spam because of adrenaline.
Look at Stork for example in BW. He had APM in the 200's... While Jaedong had like 400APM lol. It all just depends on the player and how they feel comfortable playing.
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writer22816 sc2 just takes less apm than bw. can't you just admit that and move on?
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I don't get why people with low APM feel so insecure about it. If it's not a big deal, why do you have to justify yourself with threads like these?
(my APM is awful, fyi)
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APM is a meassurement of how many actions you do. Having a low average might not be so bad, but if you are unable to have it spike in critical situations, it probably means you could be hotkeying things and using your hotkeys better. Maybe you're using the minimap too much compared to double tapping hotkeys etc. With more "APM" you will actually be able to slow down your play quite a lot.
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On November 05 2010 18:46 writer22816 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 05 2010 18:00 Hurricane wrote:
Priding yourself on low APM is detrimental to improving. Taking pride in something means you are happy with it. Being happy with low APM leads to a mental block against trying to play faster. With that mental block in place it is harder to start assigning more things to hotkeys and cycling through them to check on the progress of things. It will seem like "useless apm that only spammers do" in your head, where it is actually extremely helpful and essential to improving.
Just something to think about. 100% agree. OP you should get off your high horse and stop thinking that high apm is obnoxious and showing off.
If you can be a top starcraft pro with ~250 APM, I dont think how high apm is not showing off at those amateur levels
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i would love to harass you. two banshees or two dropships or a hellion drop, mmm juicy. it would be 2 seconds before you even moved your probes, not to mention the ones at your nat. thats to say that you noticed it immediately, but i think it would be a good 5 seconds of probes before you clicked on the minimap, clicked on your probes and moved away.
sure, some people will hand you wins because they're bad. doesnt mean that having low apm is some sort of advantage.
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Well it´s not like protoss have ever needed anything more than 1 hotkey in sc2.
In the golden BW days there was atleast the need for 1a2a3a but now it´s just: make colossus => 1a
Yes, he lost.
But does he get more things done than you in an average match? yes.
Has he more room for improvement? yes.
would he beat you in a bo5? most likely
is this really that amusing? not really
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Apm only really starts to matter if the person with APM actually knows what he is doing.
Otherwise, the apm means nothing. (my 150 apm really doesn't help me, because I don't practice enough and don't have my builds down to an art yet :[ )
Note: nearly everyone I lose to has worse apm than me - but that doesn't mean i'm better overall. I might have better mechanics, but i am unable to apply them due to my sketchiness.
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Excepting micro, the game can be played optimally with something like 100 APM is my guess.
Reasonably good micro can bring this up to maybe 150 APM (seeing bots with 4000+ APM doing insane things with mutas tells you what more micro can do).
400 APM players are definitely clicking more than they need to, but it doesn't detract from their play if they aren't doing useless things with 90% of their clicks.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/dehdN.jpg)
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