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Inspired by SjoW's play, I've recently tried to play my games in a more intelligent manner. While I would make silly mistakes in the past such as forgetting to put a marine in front of my opponent's base to see when he moves out or replacing him if he gets killed, put units on attack paths to see the enemy's movement and forget upgrades and depots because I was too focused on aggression, I now actually slowed down and actually thought about what I was doing, rather than mindless spamming of APM and needless multitasking for the sake of playing faster.
The results: My supply block timing went down from my usual 2-3 minutes++ (terrible!) to never exceeding 1:30. I am no longer caught off guard by all-ins and rarely caught out of position (i.e. moving out just as a drop comes in). Even if I lose to an all-in, it is due to my defensive mistakes (i.e. lack of bunkers, poor unit composition) rather than not knowing it is coming. Even though I felt like I had been playing much much slower, my APM actually improved from 110-120 to 140-150 (I have no idea how), and I am now 20-6 on ladder, and looking to get into Masters for the 2nd time! 
In conclusion/TL:DR : Trying to "play faster" is not a bad thing in itself, but it must not come at the expense of your logical thinking and focus on the more important stuff.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8nKZnQS.jpg)
P.S. I haven't made a single hellbat in my last 20 games
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Grats. I need to work on those things as well. Good luck getting into masters
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I personally always found that APM spamming should be done just to get your APM up so you have enough time to macro/micro while at the same time being able to focus on your strategy, scouting etc, the actual spamming is obviously detrimental to your play. Seems like you've spammed enough and gotten to the point where your APM is fast enough for what you need to do, which must be a pretty nice feeling.
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People always quote the sc2 apm but not sc2gears EAPM, which is more of a reliable metric as to your multitasking/efficiency. But yeah being fast doesn't help if you're doing things wrong, plus the actual thing that helps you being faster AND more efficient is your attention. I found my EAPM raising a lot recently because I focused on doing a clean macro cycle (camera on army > production > main > nat > 3rd and repeat, with looks at the minimap every few seconds). I spend less time looking around doing nothing, I miss less depots, and have overall more time to look at my army and micro it.
Getting used to a good macro cycle + frequent minimap/money/supply looks are the way to get fast and efficient, refer to the innovation FPVOD for a good exemple. Finally got to 160+ eapm doing that!
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Good blog I've been thinking about this as well, while playing some HoTS for the first time since my more active BW gaming days. I played with a friend, and he is much more analytic than me, and that really different than I'm used to while I play alone.. I would say I'm faster and macro wise better, though I don't think trough while playing as much as him, which makes me so much worse since my tactic is always to mass produce an army and attack and overwhelm my enemy, and not neccecary to outsmart him, even if my builds sometimes are really tricky.
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EPT
