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So in Starcraft obviously a highly debated and talked about subject or concept about the game is your actions per minute, or apm. Some of the best players in the world have upwards of 300+ apm on average and like anything you want to be good in, many players emulate and practice this concept. The more actions you can do, the more you are in control of what you have which is a huge thing most people in their lives do not ever take full potential of in their lives or in a game. So to practice your apm you constantly try to maintain a level of actions done ever minute or even second and track your progress with the use of a apm counter.
![[image loading]](http://i.gyazo.com/a9712e824fc7497c71893298664046d8.png) A typical SC2 end game battle report showing an APM counter.
Some debate that apm isn't as important as mechanics or game sense as a whole when playing games like Stracraft. You can have 600 apm but if you start building that first pylon at 500 minerals, chances are its not worth it. The only friend I've ever had in real life played Brood War and he always focused so much of his time and practice while playing the game into his apm. The biggest thing I saw from this was that he made errors in his early game and build orders constantly, but was able to maintain macro while engaged in a micro situation mid game. I've always had a lower apm and relied on my build order being crisp and my first attack to be micro managed very heavily at times, usually sacrificing my macro in terms of setting up more bases or making more worker. However I maintained a fairly high win rate when I use to play, at least early SC2 Protoss diamond days xD
However another game arguably a complete opposite from Starcraft but also arguably a more popular in this day and age, Dota2, has no APM counter what so ever. Oddly enough however neither did Dota1 so it begs the question why has there never been a built in APM counter/tracker put into DotA?
![[image loading]](http://i.gyazo.com/2c69ae24a5994416f9b08f0c09c4c89e.png) The game I wanted to check for the APM counter while watching a friend.
Many people argue that it's not as important, or useless, as other games and there would quite frankly be no point to include it. However I highly disagree with anyone using that as an excuse because APM highly factors into Dota just like it factors into anything in life like cooking or auto mechanics. From checking enemy hero's item build as well as level while being able to maintain hero control is a simple example. Being aware of what is going around you, not relying on the Lion 600 units saying something into the mic or pinging madly on the map.
So why is it such a big deal to have it in the game? Or out of it for that matter. Well really it's not so important, and if people really care about there APM they will download one of many third party programs that track their APM regardless of the game. However I think it would be a good addition because I wanted to explain to my friend the Anti-Mage that he had decent farm but had very poor reaction time and APM which got him killed and lost his team fights a few times. But since there was no APM counter and he never played Starcraft, he only had a vague understanding of what I meant and kept insisting that he checked the mini-map constantly as his defense.
TLdr; Id like to see a APM counter implemented into Dota2, agree? If not why?
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I swear my APM is going to be like 20 when I am techies lol
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
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Why are there no APM counters in Counter Strike, Street Fighter, etc? It's a completelly useless feature. APM isn't reaction time. For a lot of people 90% of the APM would be meaningless spam. For the rest the APM would be extremelly slow. Average APM is useless in an 1 hour long game with extremelly small "APM moments". Those few teamfights were maybe APM could have shown something (maybe) are meaningless when added with all the farming, laning, moving around the map, etc.
And Dota 1 actually did have an APM meter, coming from WC3 and all that, but noone took it seriously for obvious reasons.
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IMO Decision making, communication and correct attention allocation(map awareness, etc etc) is what makes you good at dota. Of course you need good reaction time as well to be good with the game obviously like almost every other game out there.
And i think you are frustrated with your friends reaction time and map awareness. It's not APM.
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Going from BW > DotA1 > SC2 > DotA2...I dunno I've never thought about APM like in starcraft. Just has never been that relevant to me in a productive sense other than if you want to spam for e-peen. Even though I spammed some in SC it was often to warm-me up, rather than to pad the meters, that shit is pointless.
Considering you were Diamond you have a good understanding of APM, clearly. And I can see you've applied it to your observations in DotA, but before Starcraft how much DotA have you played? Would you consider yourself more a SC player or DotA player?
Although my gaming started in BW I mainly played 3v3 and 4v4 messing around in BGH. DotA1 was playing my best as intuitively as possible, while accumulating all the hero mechanics and patch evolutions into my knowledge bank. SC2 is where I honed/grinded mechancis in to the ground. Going back to DotA2, i have all the mechanics from SC2 and 6 years of Encyclopedia-esque knowledge in dota that has given me a great perspective of DotA.
From that...I haven't found the APM that I acquired in SC2 to be that relevant in DotA. In my perspective (Masters Protoss), my high APM is more of a bonus to my team in that I'm able to do things with the courier or microing extra units, sometimes mid fight. So overall there's just so many other things you have to work on that APM is just very low on the list of priorities. In fact I gather most people have enough APM to be successful at DotA.
Don't get me wrong, the extra possibilities/capabilities that come with having that APM available at your disposal is still useful.
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Was wondering how to see APM in Dota too, thanks guys for clearing things up. APM doesn't matter nearly as much in Dota as it does in StarCraft though.
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Playing starcraft teaches you how to play starcraft and doesnt give you multitasking in everything else ever (dota included).
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High apm is definitely required to be good at Starcraft and while some skills can be carried over to Dota, I don't think apm is a necessary one.
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On December 21 2014 15:47 meegrean wrote:
High apm is definitely required to be good at Starcraft and while some skills can be carried over to Dota, I don't think apm is a necessary one.
ask sjow what his apm is
unless you think 100 is high
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most of my friends have higher apm than me coz they spasm out and spam click right click a billion times while simply autoing a guy... they cancel their own spells like "phantom rush" and them clicking so much makes them misclick in between but they dont see it coz they're used to it
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theres too much inflation of clicking on attacks for apm.
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You lost your credibility at the "high winrate."
And you didn't give reason why it's related to dota. OP is some starcraft thread.
So you found apm interesting and in your opinion important in sc2? Well in dota it is different. And I think you don't really understand what APM is. It's not speed. It is actions per minute. Now think a moment what actions per minute means literally.
It is not generally interesting thing in dota.
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Typically Hon players think APM is relevant in DotA. =x
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Would be cool to know how high the APM is for certain heroes at certain mmr's. Say comparing Chen players in 1k mmr with 4/5/6k mmr players would make a nice graph.
edit: Or seeing your APM over time... Idk, we need more stats an shit
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I don't think it's relevant, but it would be interesting.
My buddies and I play SC2 at about the same level, but my 160 zerg APM doesn't mean I'm worse than my buddy's 140 protoss APM or my other buddy's 80 terran/zerg apm.
There are a bunch of stats that would be interesting though, like how often a player looks at an area of the map where their hero isn't, how often they check the inventory of enemy heroes, how much farm is gained from neutrals/lane creeps/heroes, or runecontrol stats... I don't think much of it would be gamechanging information, but it'd be neat to see how these stats show up for pros.
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I think apm is relevant for me personally, when I am motivated I used to play with 180-200 apm in HoN, in DoTa, due to lack of statistics I don't know, but I noticed that when I am eager, concentrated I will naturally have a much higher apm than when I am sleepy/ drunk /annoyed / not giving a fuck.
IMHO you can archive almost the same with low apm as with high apm, so playwise it doesn't make a difference, but I belive it's easier to play better when you have high apm, because you will be more active, when you're already in a mood where you micro fast, it's ez to take a glimps at top rune, bot, while lasthitting etc, then if you only click once in a while, and then suddenly have to do 3 actions almost at the same time for example.
ofc bragging with apm is meaningless, just my friends I played hon with often had like 57 or so
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you can't ever put high apm towards good skill in dota 2 ever.
In sc2 you could say that you at least have the APM to cycle through macro cycles or making sure your macro is top notch every single second, but in dota 2 every action is unique, in such way that apm is 100% irrelevant
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On December 22 2014 07:32 deadmau wrote:
Typically Hon players think APM is relevant in DotA. =x
On December 22 2014 09:53 Wrath 2.1 wrote:
I think apm is relevant for me personally, when I am motivated I used to play with 180-200 apm in HoN...
ofc bragging with apm is meaningless, just my friends I played hon with often had like 57 or so
My post above is related to this mentality of all hon players i've noticed. I played HoN in my time transitioning from DotA1 to SC2, so I can definitely see where that mentality comes from, HoN players have this obsession with metrics, even if said metrics are meaningless, blame s2 maybe? Hon was loaded with bunch of stats that meant very little in terms of actual skill. After leaving HoN and playing SC2 for a few years, going back to DotA2, APM just doesn't mean as much.
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Reaction time is much more important for dota 2, there is no macro, so you just dont need that many actions. I'll go so far as to say APM is totally irrelevant for dota 2.
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EPT
