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Hey,
Something i've been curious about since EPM got introduced is that my EPM tends to hover around 70-90 EPM. While i watch my opponents have EPM around the 100-110. My APM is most of the time pretty high (150-180) but as i recall it also counts spamming buttons.
I tried to actively push myself but it tends to be around the same range. When i see my friends stream or play it seems they are going as fast as i am.
Im probably wrong but can anyone point out wich actions count etc. My level is High Diamond atm (im 7 times master zerg).
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EPM is actions that actually matter/have an impact on what happens in the game, while APM is every action you make. for example, If you box your army 100 times in a minute, you will have 100 APM however it doesnt have an impact on the game because no command was issued to the units, and no EPM will be gained. For the most part, think of it like this. Anything where you are managing control groups/spamming/selecting larva will not count towards EPM, while things like creep spreading, injecting, unit creation and unit movement all count towards EPM,(things that have an impact on the game)
I know this was abit long winded, but i hope i got the point across 
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You need to stop focusing on your "EPM"... This game is not about playing at lightning speed, its about understanding and timing things correctly.. Stop spamming everything, it doesn't make you better it just makes you look good.
Focus on strategy, map awareness, understanding timings, builds.. apm comes later. You should never have to focus on increasing your apm unless its at a horrible place. 100 epm is enough actions to win games at a high level - trust me.
If you're playing this game just to look cool in front of your friends spamming around your apm then have fun doing that. Guy above pretty much explained everything. EPM stands for Effective Actions Per Minute (dont ask me why theres so A)
PS: Being better at the game than your friends is much cooler than having more "EPM" - just a tip
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I know what you're asking is not exactly what I'm gonna say, but I'll say it anyway: don't worry about these numbers. Just watch some pro streams or spend some time analyzing yourself and look for ways to optimize your mechanics.
If you think your hotkey setup isn't very good, change it. If you don't use camera keys much, start using them to keep an eye on your worker count and if everything else is the way it is supposed to be. For zergs, you can also use them to check how much time is left until the next inject. Make a point of always rallying overlords properly so that you don't accidently send any of the across the map. Improve how fast you spread creep.
The way you do things is more important than your EPM. You can obviously work on your speed too if you think that would make you more efficient.
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On March 28 2014 00:33 MagnuMizer wrote:
You need to stop focusing on your "EPM"... This game is not about playing at lightning speed, its about understanding and timing things correctly.. Stop spamming everything, it doesn't make you better it just makes you look good.
Focus on strategy, map awareness, understanding timings, builds.. apm comes later. You should never have to focus on increasing your apm unless its at a horrible place. 100 epm is enough actions to win games at a high level - trust me.
If you're playing this game just to look cool in front of your friends spamming around your apm then have fun doing that. Guy above pretty much explained everything. EPM stands for Effective Actions Per Minute (dont ask me why theres so A)
PS: Being better at the game than your friends is much cooler than having more "EPM" - just a tip
I almost agree with you. I have always had low apm compared to my league. I consistently have 20-30 less apm than my opponents mostly because I don't spam commands as much (a-clicking on the same spot over and over agains during a battle makes me cringe). BUT I do believe that increasing your speed (not necessarily APM) will directly make you a better player. The faster you can macro, the more time you can spend microing and scouting, the faster you can move around the map, switch between units and locations, the more you will be able to multitask.
This game is a strategy game, so tactics and decision making are obviously important, BUT its also a game of mechanics. If you want to get better you will eventually need to get faster, and trust me you will have way more fun the faster you get.
Think of EPM as a type of currency: the more you have (max speed) the more you can spend on macro, micro, scouting, multitasking.
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On March 28 2014 01:09 Doc Brawler wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 00:33 MagnuMizer wrote:
You need to stop focusing on your "EPM"... This game is not about playing at lightning speed, its about understanding and timing things correctly.. Stop spamming everything, it doesn't make you better it just makes you look good.
Focus on strategy, map awareness, understanding timings, builds.. apm comes later. You should never have to focus on increasing your apm unless its at a horrible place. 100 epm is enough actions to win games at a high level - trust me.
If you're playing this game just to look cool in front of your friends spamming around your apm then have fun doing that. Guy above pretty much explained everything. EPM stands for Effective Actions Per Minute (dont ask me why theres so A)
PS: Being better at the game than your friends is much cooler than having more "EPM" - just a tip I almost agree with you. I have always had low apm compared to my league. I consistently have 20-30 less apm than my opponents mostly because I don't spam commands as much (a-clicking on the same spot over and over agains during a battle makes me cringe). BUT I do believe that increasing your speed (not necessarily APM) will directly make you a better player. The faster you can macro, the more time you can spend microing and scouting, the faster you can move around the map, switch between units and locations, the more you will be able to multitask. This game is a strategy game, so tactics and decision making are obviously important, BUT its also a game of mechanics. If you want to get better you will eventually need to get faster, and trust me you will have way more fun the faster you get. Think of EPM as a type of currency: the more you have (max speed) the more you can spend on macro, micro, scouting, multitasking.
cmon doc, the guy plays zerg. you dont need apm to play zerg.
But i agree, being able to complete your macro duties faster then others, injections creep and unit production, will free up screen time and give you time to worry about strategy / tactics. while I wouldn´t advise you to look at your apm, you should still pay very close attention how long it takes you to complete a full macro cycle. I admit that the concept is somewhat wierd with Zerg macro yet, eg with terran, its a skill level defining deal. If you think about it; a normal Starcraft game ends @ around 14- 20 minutes, most of the time neither p76layer manages to max out or, get their full base setup completed. Thus, they are both having to fully macro the entire game. Building Structures and doing their Macro cycles. You are able to complete your macro cycle in lets say, for arguments sake, 1.5 seconds, and the usual time it takes you to go back to base and build a structure and return to microing is 2 seconds while your opponent does these things in 1 and 1.5 seconds. If we now assume a 14 minute game, with standart macro builds, you will have to complete around 100 macro cycles, and build 8 rax 2 ccs 1 factory 1 starport, do 2- 3 addon switches, builld 2 ebays 1 armory roughly 16 depots and drop about 42 mules, for a total of 75 actions that need you to move your screen away from microing.
while you do all this in 150 + 150 seconds for a total of 300 seconds = 5 minutes, your opponent does it in 100 + 100 = 200 or 3 minutes and 20 seconds.
thus if you are fighting at all times, as you should, out of the assumed 14 minute game, there will be 1 minute and 40 seconds, where your units are idleing around while your opponent is microing his. Resulting in a devastating advantage.
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On March 28 2014 02:19 alpenrahm wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 01:09 Doc Brawler wrote:On March 28 2014 00:33 MagnuMizer wrote:
You need to stop focusing on your "EPM"... This game is not about playing at lightning speed, its about understanding and timing things correctly.. Stop spamming everything, it doesn't make you better it just makes you look good.
Focus on strategy, map awareness, understanding timings, builds.. apm comes later. You should never have to focus on increasing your apm unless its at a horrible place. 100 epm is enough actions to win games at a high level - trust me.
If you're playing this game just to look cool in front of your friends spamming around your apm then have fun doing that. Guy above pretty much explained everything. EPM stands for Effective Actions Per Minute (dont ask me why theres so A)
PS: Being better at the game than your friends is much cooler than having more "EPM" - just a tip I almost agree with you. I have always had low apm compared to my league. I consistently have 20-30 less apm than my opponents mostly because I don't spam commands as much (a-clicking on the same spot over and over agains during a battle makes me cringe). BUT I do believe that increasing your speed (not necessarily APM) will directly make you a better player. The faster you can macro, the more time you can spend microing and scouting, the faster you can move around the map, switch between units and locations, the more you will be able to multitask. This game is a strategy game, so tactics and decision making are obviously important, BUT its also a game of mechanics. If you want to get better you will eventually need to get faster, and trust me you will have way more fun the faster you get. Think of EPM as a type of currency: the more you have (max speed) the more you can spend on macro, micro, scouting, multitasking. cmon doc, the guy plays zerg. you dont need apm to play zerg.
what?
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On March 28 2014 03:30 parkufarku wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 02:19 alpenrahm wrote:On March 28 2014 01:09 Doc Brawler wrote:On March 28 2014 00:33 MagnuMizer wrote:
You need to stop focusing on your "EPM"... This game is not about playing at lightning speed, its about understanding and timing things correctly.. Stop spamming everything, it doesn't make you better it just makes you look good.
Focus on strategy, map awareness, understanding timings, builds.. apm comes later. You should never have to focus on increasing your apm unless its at a horrible place. 100 epm is enough actions to win games at a high level - trust me.
If you're playing this game just to look cool in front of your friends spamming around your apm then have fun doing that. Guy above pretty much explained everything. EPM stands for Effective Actions Per Minute (dont ask me why theres so A)
PS: Being better at the game than your friends is much cooler than having more "EPM" - just a tip I almost agree with you. I have always had low apm compared to my league. I consistently have 20-30 less apm than my opponents mostly because I don't spam commands as much (a-clicking on the same spot over and over agains during a battle makes me cringe). BUT I do believe that increasing your speed (not necessarily APM) will directly make you a better player. The faster you can macro, the more time you can spend microing and scouting, the faster you can move around the map, switch between units and locations, the more you will be able to multitask. This game is a strategy game, so tactics and decision making are obviously important, BUT its also a game of mechanics. If you want to get better you will eventually need to get faster, and trust me you will have way more fun the faster you get. Think of EPM as a type of currency: the more you have (max speed) the more you can spend on macro, micro, scouting, multitasking. cmon doc, the guy plays zerg. you dont need apm to play zerg. what?
what what?
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Focus on what value-add features of your play that you could improve. Such as spreading creep all game, better inject timings, spending larvae more quickly, keeping money down, scouting, watching minimap, splitting, flanking etc.
As you identify what you need to improve and attempt to do so in the game, you will find that you add actions to your gameplay. This is what will increase your epm and your gameplay.
This process is something that can be done at any level, resulting in a solid foundation for continual improvement.
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Just curious: How come you are 7 times master and don't know the difference between apm and epm?
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On March 28 2014 05:54 BjoernK wrote:
Just curious: How come you are 7 times master and don't know the difference between apm and epm?
He knows what it is. He is asking which SPECIFIC actions add to EPM.
Wen't into a replay.
Looks like selecting stuff / shifting screens with screen save doesn't count towards EPM, but mostly everything else does.
Massing right clicks would give you high EPM.
Spamming between hotkeys would give you 0 EPM, but high APM.
You should focus more on strategy / build orders / macro mechanics.
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The EPM implemented by Blizzard is totally worthless as is. It doesn't account for command spams such as right click spamming. It also completely discards the value of regularly keeping tabs on your control groups to check unit/building status.
A better metric would be sc2gear's EAPM, with the added benefit that it is based on real time and not blizzard time.
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Russian Federation262 Posts
Try to start using 4-5 camera locations. Helps A LOT!
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If you want to actually check your effective apm, do it with sc2gears, but it's kind of flawed too (because as zerg if you spam click to rally when you produce units you get massive spikes). But as people said it's not something to focus on particularly, even if it's interesting to have an exact metric on your improvement on one aspect on the game.
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I am in the same position as the OP. Former masters chilling in diamond trying to improve my apm. 3 months ago, I would spamm everything like crazy and got my apm up to 180. Then I realized a lot of those actions were really hurting my game so I cut them out and now average between 130-150.
Two examples of this: 1)To make a drone. Instead of spamming s,s,s, I just keep s pressed down and put a second finger over d. This way no time is wasted between larva becoming available and being used. 2)Another common spamm is select hatchery, select larva repeated over and over. Instead of doing this in the early game I concentrate on putting drones on close patches. These examples lead to me having less than 90 apm in early game.
So what actions are pros doing to keep their apm up at 200+ during the early game? mid game? late game?
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I am in a similar position. Every now and then people call me out for low average apm, and so I started watching the replays to see what these guys (who in some cases were tripling my actions en route to them losing) were doing. Id watch the game from their camera, and what I found was that these guys managed to run their APM the first few minutes up into the 200 action range, while mine hovered around 40. I dont know what the hell they were doing with those 200 actions, because my early game 40 apm is enough to double up all the close patches (before depot) and hit the same early game benchmarks as the friggin koreans, and I swear to you it only takes 40 or so.
Even throughout the game, Id be watching their camera, and their APM would be spiking up over 200, and the friggin camera is centered on their town hall with like no units selected...I dont know what the hell they are doing, I do know that based on their production tab and unit selections that it aint much, and it surely doesnt require the amount of actions they are hammering out.
The big thing for me with APM is looking at your battle apm. That actually matters. Your average can be really low overall, it really doesn't take much actions to complete macro cycles for T, at any phase of the game, but when the fighting starts you should be jumping way up. I may average 80 actions over the course of the game, but when the fighting starts I hit 200+. The idiots only see the low average, and fail to notice that during battles I was much faster.
Personally, I think that the real benchmark with APM shouldnt be how high an average you can generate, it should be how much you can do with the fewest actions.
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On March 28 2014 03:30 parkufarku wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 02:19 alpenrahm wrote:On March 28 2014 01:09 Doc Brawler wrote:On March 28 2014 00:33 MagnuMizer wrote:
You need to stop focusing on your "EPM"... This game is not about playing at lightning speed, its about understanding and timing things correctly.. Stop spamming everything, it doesn't make you better it just makes you look good.
Focus on strategy, map awareness, understanding timings, builds.. apm comes later. You should never have to focus on increasing your apm unless its at a horrible place. 100 epm is enough actions to win games at a high level - trust me.
If you're playing this game just to look cool in front of your friends spamming around your apm then have fun doing that. Guy above pretty much explained everything. EPM stands for Effective Actions Per Minute (dont ask me why theres so A)
PS: Being better at the game than your friends is much cooler than having more "EPM" - just a tip I almost agree with you. I have always had low apm compared to my league. I consistently have 20-30 less apm than my opponents mostly because I don't spam commands as much (a-clicking on the same spot over and over agains during a battle makes me cringe). BUT I do believe that increasing your speed (not necessarily APM) will directly make you a better player. The faster you can macro, the more time you can spend microing and scouting, the faster you can move around the map, switch between units and locations, the more you will be able to multitask. This game is a strategy game, so tactics and decision making are obviously important, BUT its also a game of mechanics. If you want to get better you will eventually need to get faster, and trust me you will have way more fun the faster you get. Think of EPM as a type of currency: the more you have (max speed) the more you can spend on macro, micro, scouting, multitasking. cmon doc, the guy plays zerg. you dont need apm to play zerg. what?
As a randomer who doesn't spam, zerg apm and epm are naturally higher, injects and those massive zergling production waves push it way up... it's easier and less intensive than Terran macro though where fewer actions are more diverse and spread out about your base, not to mention battle micro. You just can't reliably compare APM/EPM across the race boundaries.
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Don't think apm or eapm matters at all really. Just focus on improving with whatever you having trouble with. Maybe some things need more apm and some less but the key is practicing the things you want to improve (and it shouldn't be apm!).
I very rarely get an opponent with less apm then me. I'm in high master on either server and quite regulary get matched with gm players and I'm usually 90-110 apm and a lot less for shorter games (40-50 quite common if I win with 2 base pressure). Then i run my replays in a replay analyzer like sc2gears or ggtracker and I see they sit at ~300 apm for the first 5-10 min while im at my 30-50 while in the midgame I'm quite often 200-300 while they may be the same or lower.
Don't think eapm is any different either, tapping to constantly produce workers and such is something that is actually usefull as well as jumping to overlords and such to see scouting info.
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APM in itself is really not important at all, as long as you are fast enough for everything. If two players are able to do the same things with one having a higher apm than the other, it is stupid to call the higher-apm-player better.
In the early game it's true that there is not much stuff to do, so you could potentially sit around at 10 apm producing a worker every few seconds, but in the midgame when you have to inject, creep, move units around and spend your resources asap you do need somewhat high of an apm. For progamers it is not useful to just chill out during early game and then having to quickly spike up when you need it, it's better to maintain roughly the same speed throughout the whole game, which means spamming at the start to get your fingers warmed up for the midgame.
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On March 28 2014 03:37 alpenrahm wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2014 03:30 parkufarku wrote:On March 28 2014 02:19 alpenrahm wrote:On March 28 2014 01:09 Doc Brawler wrote:On March 28 2014 00:33 MagnuMizer wrote:
You need to stop focusing on your "EPM"... This game is not about playing at lightning speed, its about understanding and timing things correctly.. Stop spamming everything, it doesn't make you better it just makes you look good.
Focus on strategy, map awareness, understanding timings, builds.. apm comes later. You should never have to focus on increasing your apm unless its at a horrible place. 100 epm is enough actions to win games at a high level - trust me.
If you're playing this game just to look cool in front of your friends spamming around your apm then have fun doing that. Guy above pretty much explained everything. EPM stands for Effective Actions Per Minute (dont ask me why theres so A)
PS: Being better at the game than your friends is much cooler than having more "EPM" - just a tip I almost agree with you. I have always had low apm compared to my league. I consistently have 20-30 less apm than my opponents mostly because I don't spam commands as much (a-clicking on the same spot over and over agains during a battle makes me cringe). BUT I do believe that increasing your speed (not necessarily APM) will directly make you a better player. The faster you can macro, the more time you can spend microing and scouting, the faster you can move around the map, switch between units and locations, the more you will be able to multitask. This game is a strategy game, so tactics and decision making are obviously important, BUT its also a game of mechanics. If you want to get better you will eventually need to get faster, and trust me you will have way more fun the faster you get. Think of EPM as a type of currency: the more you have (max speed) the more you can spend on macro, micro, scouting, multitasking. cmon doc, the guy plays zerg. you dont need apm to play zerg. what? what what?
Is there a low apm pro zerg?
I know terran has sjow, goody and protoss has elfi
But any low apm zerg pro?
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What you need to do to increase your apm and especially epm is not just practice spamming button, but (at least in my experience) developing a clear idea of what it is you want to be doing.
Ahead of the game you should have some sort of plan and preferably a set of standard responses to different things you scout, thinking on the fly is almost certainly going to lower your apm/epm. If you know exactly what you're aiming to do you're only worried about execution instead of being worried about strategy.
Deciding upon these simple ideas made my apm go from around 150 to around 250 in a very short time. What I mean by that is, just decide you're going to fast expand into fast ling speed and get the lair when you have 100 gas, or some super simplistic stuff like that.
Just repeat game after game and you'll become more comfortable with it, when you know what to do you can do it so much faster.
EDIT: Also, the actions which count are the useful actions. As long as you can perform all the tasks you need to perform at a given time you're fast enough.
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On March 29 2014 15:51 Amazonic wrote:
What you need to do to increase your apm and especially epm is not just practice spamming button, but (at least in my experience) developing a clear idea of what it is you want to be doing.
Ahead of the game you should have some sort of plan and preferably a set of standard responses to different things you scout, thinking on the fly is almost certainly going to lower your apm/epm. If you know exactly what you're aiming to do you're only worried about execution instead of being worried about strategy.
Deciding upon these simple ideas made my apm go from around 150 to around 250 in a very short time. What I mean by that is, just decide you're going to fast expand into fast ling speed and get the lair when you have 100 gas, or some super simplistic stuff like that.
Just repeat game after game and you'll become more comfortable with it, when you know what to do you can do it so much faster.
EDIT: Also, the actions which count are the useful actions. As long as you can perform all the tasks you need to perform at a given time you're fast enough.
Great post man. I have to agree. It's the same in typing. At first your fingers are slow and clumsy. But, you learn to type at 100% accuracy at VERY slow speed and plan where every finger goes and how it should move to get there. Eventually you can type whole passages with incredible speed and precision without even thinking about the individual letters.
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On March 29 2014 15:51 Amazonic wrote:
What you need to do to increase your apm and especially epm is not just practice spamming button, but (at least in my experience) developing a clear idea of what it is you want to be doing.
Ahead of the game you should have some sort of plan and preferably a set of standard responses to different things you scout, thinking on the fly is almost certainly going to lower your apm/epm. If you know exactly what you're aiming to do you're only worried about execution instead of being worried about strategy.
Deciding upon these simple ideas made my apm go from around 150 to around 250 in a very short time. What I mean by that is, just decide you're going to fast expand into fast ling speed and get the lair when you have 100 gas, or some super simplistic stuff like that.
Just repeat game after game and you'll become more comfortable with it, when you know what to do you can do it so much faster.
EDIT: Also, the actions which count are the useful actions. As long as you can perform all the tasks you need to perform at a given time you're fast enough.
let's call that DPM, decisions per minute
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When I was in gold league my APM use to be as low as 60 as Terran.
Over time, I've noticed my average slowly go up to 80 (Still in Gold League) This was over a year ago.
When I was lingering in Platinum my APM usually averaged 100.
Now as a Diamond player, my APM average is usually around 140.
Goes to show that the more you play, the more knowledge and understanding of the game you have, the faster you play because your mind is moving faster than your hands can, and over time, your hands catch-up :D
As for the OP question, I wouldn't focus on it too much; just go with APM, the original, and the best.
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On March 29 2014 21:07 xtorn wrote:let's call that DPM, decisions per minute
Yeah I like that! Your APM is basically just that, your EPM is completely depending on your DPM.
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its hard to measure epm on sc2 also because alot of people use screencapture hotkeys also (f keys)
sc2 gears has something called XPM i think that is more precise than both apm and epm
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High Master Random player here. Zerg (in contrast to Terran and Protoss) and the control of the main army units (basically anything bar Mutas and Blings) require very little micro. Positioning for engages and finding the right angles and reinforcement paths are generally the most important parts of playing that style, so low APM/EPM doesn't matter for Zerg as much as other races.
110 EPM means that you probably sit around 50 EPM early and spike during production (and hopefully; engages) so that you have a good benchmark in 150+ EPM during fights which is hands down a good start if you use it efficiently.
As an example, I have friends who are placed as Gold and argue that APM/EPM is extremely key for getting better, but they're still stuck in Gold because they spam rally points and care about their external performance and keyboard sound more than improving gameplay skills.
Look at the pro scene. We have GooDy and elfi as our resident low APM benchmark players nowadays, and we used to have WhiteRa and SjoW as well.
Back when Merz was playing, he has known as an APM master for having 350+ APM almost every game, starting from the 0:02 mark. Select, a more successful player known for his APM usage for extreme levels of harassment still only averages around 245-260, and HuK used to be in the same region.
All in all, Starcraft 2 doesn't demand EPM above 100 for high levels of play. If you learn to use every single one of the efficiently, an actual EPM of 100 surpasses the true EPM for a small amount of mechanically slower pro players who, even they, spam a lot.
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EPT
