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On August 22 2012 23:32 Kentisc wrote:
Very very nice read and very informative topic!
Good job man, seriously.
At the moment both my APM and EPM are very low (gold player), but I'm sure this will get me far
It's not about league, i am Diamond in EU and my apm / epm has been like exactly the same since i was in silver (120/130 - 70/80). And i'm sure i could get to master without increasing apm, by studying BOs and Timings, i just want to learn to play faster because i think it's cool u.u
On August 23 2012 02:00 StateofReverie wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 22:39 crow_mw wrote:
@highloardakkarin - I understood perfectly what you meant in your post (and why it wouldn't make much sense to provide a FPVOD of it) and apparently StateofReverie did as well. I was really looking for an OP oppinion on the question you asked but oh well...
So, other than the hand shape, how do you 300 APM guys position your hand on keyboard (with default key bindings)? Fingers 'by default' over asdf? More to the right? Or maybe 456 with ring to index and press most common commands (like a and s) with pinky? i dont mean tocsound cliche but it really is true. just as a sword is just anotger extension of your arm, so is your keyboard in a way. you are looking at it all wrong when you ask about hand position because ifcyou are going to play at 300apm a second thats 5 actions a second. thats pretty fast and when you are thinking that fast you think where do i need to go next so you dont slow down when you do something else. You ask where you want your hand to be on the kryboard you make it ALL OVER the keyboard because unless you customized all your hotkeys to one side of the board you will be jumping around more then one handlength on the keyboard
Well, this is like what i wanted to read ^^ I was starting to realize by myself that this spam-like-an-idiot training is forcefully improving my control over the keyboard and my dynamicity - even if i still have a long way to go ><
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ya basically what the spam like an idiot does is it improves your hand eye coordination between your actions and your thoughts. I can do this pretty flawlessly but only because ive done this for a while now.My main race is terran, but I like to offrace as zerg and protoss sometimes. It is very appearent though because i can get 270apm with each race that there is an underlying similarity between the three races that allows me to play so fast with little practice.
An argument can also be supported that no race is "faster" than the other. My personal opinion on that though is that I think zerg gives me the most eapm and least spam while terran has more redundant actions and protoss macro is "easiest" because of the simplicity of warpgate.
My personal record highs are
Terran - 297 apm/188eapm
Zerg - 331apm/210eapm
Protoss 272apm/163 eapm
Edit: Dont look at apm as actions per minute. There are aimply too many things going on during a minute of sc2. In reality I have about 3 effective actions per second and 4-5 actions per second. How can this be applied to improvement? Well lets see how long it takes to do something like make 3 scvs. The hotkey command for me would be 4sss. Well hitting 4sss is pretty easy to do in one second. Thats 4 hotkeys, or actions, in about a second and thats pretty accurate to my overall records.
Heres where the "art" is applied to truly create masterpiece execution games. Now almost everyone can hit 4sss to make 3 scvs in a second. Hell Im even betting that people with mechanical keyboards can clear that in half a second easy. Lets add in another macro command, lets say making 5 marines. To make 5 marines I hit 5aaaaa. Now we have 2 different things that we can do. What happens when are in an intensive micro fight at the opponents main and he is attacking our third with a small counter attack? Well heres all the issues that have to be addressed.
- we have to make marines/scvs
- we have to micro our troops
-we potentially might need to make some supply depots or lift up buildings or start an uograde.
We have all of this to do all seemingly at the same time. This is called multitasking as Im sure you know. I outlined several tasks that all have to be done at around the same time. First we have to make some priorities. The most important thing that takes our attention is the battle on hand. The rest can be looked at as a bonus. Its a bonus if you keep your macro going and keep making units. Now that we have our maib attention focused on the battle the subtle thing that gets done to be able to micro and macro is actually more reliant on micro more than anything.
We normally micro our units to gain an upper hand during a battle by trading more cost effectively compared to the other guy. That is the goal if you want to win a micro fight. However the goal changes slightly when you change the objective from solely winning a fight to wining a fight AND macroing. As stated earlier, for us to "macro" all we need in this situation is to make 3 scvs and 5 marines by pressing 10 keys on the keyboard.
Now during the fight, different micro tactics become available through this train of thought. As stated earlier it should take you 2 seconds max to carry out all the macro tasks at hand. During the fight now we need to obtain about 2 seconds of downtime where we can hit 10 hotkeys. 2 seconds might sound like a lot but in reality we dont have to have those seconds uniformly. In other words those 2 seconds can be split up. The best opportunities for this are to do your macro before and after the important parts are over such as casting spells and before the main battle actually commences.
The most effecient way of getting things done would ultimately be able to stutter your army backwards for a moment which allows you to get most macroing done. Things do get more complicated but I just used an easy example that would make more sense and cause less confusion
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
This is a good way of thinking about it. And there ARE things that you can only do if you can play fast, which will be unavailable to a low-apm player. By pushing up your max raw APM then trying to fill it with eAPM in a consistent and organized manner as talked about in this guide, you can get access to new strategies, tactics, and moves that you wouldn't be able to execute with low apm.
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Zerg gives you higher EAPM because keeping a key pressed when making say 100 lings is considered effective actions, and therefore makes crazy EAPM peaks.
To people arguing that you can be a good player without high apm and perfect mechanics, it may be true, but you'll be better with, so why not try to improve them too?
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@blazinghand good way of putting it if you were referring to my post. I actually didnt mean to post it right away and added a bit more hehe
@Nimix The argument itself is flawed. There is more than one way to be good at this game and it shows by what and how you practice. a good player without high apm would have other traits such as good builds or very good knowledge of the game that a player with high apm doesnt have
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Blazinghand
United States25550 Posts
@StateofReverie yeah I was talking about your post. I like the new addition, it's a good way of looking at the concept of APM and speed and how that translates into both macro and micro.
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On August 24 2012 01:51 Blazinghand wrote:
@StateofReverie yeah I was talking about your post. I like the new addition, it's a good way of looking at the concept of APM and speed and how that translates into both macro and micro.
tyty I had still some more to write so instead I just made a blog post about it all going over a couple more common scenarios and how to break them down
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A great way of increasing mouse speed and accuracy is by playing the marine split challenge. I would recommend this to any player, not just terran. This challenge basically forces you to make really quick movements with a purpose (this is a main difference between this method of increasing mouse speed and accuracy and games like OSU or Missioned).
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I found this gem of a thread a few weeks ago, and its taken me from "forever plat"to high diamond in a few weeks however I'm starting to realize that maybe I'll never have the kind of hand speed required to ply sc2 extremely fast
I wanted to ask, when talking about apm and eapm are we talking about sc2 gears numbers adjusted for real time, or in game numbers from replays? If were taking about in game numbers, I feel like I might never hit that 200apm benchmark. Infact even 170 seems nearly out of reach. I sit at around 90-100eapm based on in game numbers and about 150apm.
Anyone else that's tried this guide have trouble hitting that 200apm benchmark ? Should I just ignore it and move onto the next step and watch some fpvods? I apologize for any typos and bad grammar as I'm typing this from my phone.
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On September 03 2012 09:47 mushlafa wrote:
I found this gem of a thread a few weeks ago, and its taken me from "forever plat"to high diamond in a few weeks however I'm starting to realize that maybe I'll never have the kind of hand speed required to ply sc2 extremely fast
I wanted to ask, when talking about apm and eapm are we talking about sc2 gears numbers adjusted for real time, or in game numbers from replays? If were taking about in game numbers, I feel like I might never hit that 200apm benchmark. Infact even 170 seems nearly out of reach. I sit at around 90-100eapm based on in game numbers and about 150apm.
Anyone else that's tried this guide have trouble hitting that 200apm benchmark ? Should I just ignore it and move onto the next step and watch some fpvods? I apologize for any typos and bad grammar as I'm typing this from my phone.
We are always talking about the sc2gears where its adjusted for real time. The ingame replay sc2 apm is slightly slower so 200apm in a replay isn't 200apm in a time frame of 60 seconds.
I usually float around 200-220, but in reality, its about 50 apm higher. a 200apm benchmark would be closer to 180apm, which it seems would be a more approrpiate goal
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I dont think you even need that much apm to have realy good mechanics. I am mid master zerg my apm is around 120-150 and i think my mechanics are better than lot of my opponents with around 200 apm.
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I am surprised to read that Protoss folks have eAPMs as measured by SC2Gears of 150+.
Even after practicing, my eAPM is in the 70-80 range with Protoss. With Zerg, I can hit 120 pretty easily so I can at least see how 150+ would be possible. But I have no clue how Protoss are generating enough non-spam actions to get eAPMs of 150+.
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On September 04 2012 15:21 SacredCoconut wrote:
I dont think you even need that much apm to have realy good mechanics. I am mid master zerg my apm is around 120-150 and i think my mechanics are better than lot of my opponents with around 200 apm.
First of all, when you are playing ZvP and ZvT, they both have different guidelines that create good mechanics so unless you are mid masters PvZ and TvZ as well than you are only stating your opinion, but not stating it
On September 05 2012 20:46 mrangry wrote:
I am surprised to read that Protoss folks have eAPMs as measured by SC2Gears of 150+.
Even after practicing, my eAPM is in the 70-80 range with Protoss. With Zerg, I can hit 120 pretty easily so I can at least see how 150+ would be possible. But I have no clue how Protoss are generating enough non-spam actions to get eAPMs of 150+.
If you think about it, 120 actions per minute is 2 actions per second. That's relatively slow compared to progamers who have almost 4 actions per second. People with more eapm find more things that they can do which improves the timing of their pushes and such.
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On September 04 2012 03:46 StateofReverie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2012 09:47 mushlafa wrote:
I found this gem of a thread a few weeks ago, and its taken me from "forever plat"to high diamond in a few weeks however I'm starting to realize that maybe I'll never have the kind of hand speed required to ply sc2 extremely fast
I wanted to ask, when talking about apm and eapm are we talking about sc2 gears numbers adjusted for real time, or in game numbers from replays? If were taking about in game numbers, I feel like I might never hit that 200apm benchmark. Infact even 170 seems nearly out of reach. I sit at around 90-100eapm based on in game numbers and about 150apm.
Anyone else that's tried this guide have trouble hitting that 200apm benchmark ? Should I just ignore it and move onto the next step and watch some fpvods? I apologize for any typos and bad grammar as I'm typing this from my phone.
We are always talking about the sc2gears where its adjusted for real time. The ingame replay sc2 apm is slightly slower so 200apm in a replay isn't 200apm in a time frame of 60 seconds. I usually float around 200-220, but in reality, its about 50 apm higher. a 200apm benchmark would be closer to 180apm, which it seems would be a more approrpiate goal
OMG. I was so so so sure you all were talking about game-readjusted time apm. I'm better than i thought then :D
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Update: Here's one way to boost your eAPM, at least as measured by SC2Gears. Gears counts attack moves as effective actions so in your tapping cycle, just include some dummy attack moves with your army. I prefer to use the minimap for these attack moves because - bonus - it improves your map awareness. Easy to bump eAPM well north of 100 with this technique.
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Seeing as my boy Breezy got banned.... I have taken control of the thread. At one point I was going to do a video coaching project with this but I got WAY too busy so that is on hold. I will be adding the faq soon.
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Can clarification be added to the OP on whether the 200 APM exercise is real time APM or Blizzard time APM?
Saying "sc2gears" is ambiguous because a lot of people (including me) have the "convert game-time to real-time" checkbox unchecked.
That being said, I'm trying to aim for blizz time 200 against the AI. I just want to know whether I'm having so much trouble because I'm really slow or because I'm aiming a little higher than the OP intended.
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Real time. I will include that in the faq.
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On September 29 2012 13:43 GWBuffalo wrote:
Can clarification be added to the OP on whether the 200 APM exercise is real time APM or Blizzard time APM?
Saying "sc2gears" is ambiguous because a lot of people (including me) have the "convert game-time to real-time" checkbox unchecked.
That being said, I'm trying to aim for blizz time 200 against the AI. I just want to know whether I'm having so much trouble because I'm really slow or because I'm aiming a little higher than the OP intended.
Definitly aiming higher than the OP intended. I think about 180apm in a sc2 replay is about 200apm in real life
Me personally, I have never gotten above 230sc2 apm. Maybe I can't get any faster, maybe I am not trying hard enough. Either way, it's plenty fast for me and I can find plenty of things to do with even just 200sc2 apm :D
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This guide seems to be just the boost I need to bump myself from EU diamond to Master. Im hitting 100 eapm but surely can hit 200 apm and perhaps 130 eapm. Thanks a lot!
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EPT
