How to increase actions per minute

Question

Whats a good way to increase my actions per minute (apm)? Please note I don't want Starcraft 2 to become my life either, so reasonable strategies would be much appreciated, but please provide any solution :p.

Answer 1

Don't APM spam useless actions.

While lots of people on youtube will do this to appear better, no professional player does this. Often times jitters at the start of a match will cause them to select between multiple units but Starcraft does not register this as actions. During the course of battle you will see professional players microing units with a large number of clicks for a given move, or swap between a dozen different buildings to keep track of queues, or send new workers to mineral patches (no auto rally in SC1). This is not spam, every one of the actions has a directed purpose.

Additionally, Splitting your workers (having them divide to different patches at the beginning of a match) was necessary in Starcraft 1 as the AI was less intelligent. There have been studies in Starcraft 2 to show that the effects of this are below the margin for error. While many pro Starcraft 2 players still do this, it is hold over from Starcraft 1, not a necessary strategy.

There are a number of resources you can use to help your apm. My favorite is the SC2 Multitasking trainer map by Stet_TCL. You can find information on it here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=124983

The design is to build an army to assault an enemy base while keeping a probe on an island alive through micromanagement and picking up a stranded high templar all in a time limit. It is VERY hard, but an excellent training resource.

Answer 2

I wouldn't worry about APM. Focus on build order, keeping your resources spent, scouting, harassing, and micro (There's already several custom maps focused on this). If you can keep all that juggled then your APM will be improving as a matter of course. Training AMP is just a way to free up your brain so you can focus on the actual strategy of the game.

Answer 3

To increase your APM you have to increase your finger speed. Good ways to increase your speed on a training map:

• Take the most micro intensive unit of your race and micro as long as possible. e.g. Take 20 Marines split them as fast as possible and then cluster them again. Repeat.
• Take 10 workers and build some buildings as fast as possible and rally them to the minerals again. Stop production and repeat. e.g. Take like 6 SCVS build 6 Supply depots as fast as possible and rally them to the minerals.
• Train stutter step with Marines or Stalkers.
• Train to throw the perfect Storms, Force Fields, Fungals or EMPs as fast as possible.
• Train to queue commands as fast as possible. e.g. Take 1 Medivac and send it to a group of Marines. Put 8 Marines into the Medivac by selecting them and clicking on the Medivac. Select the Medivac shift click an optimal way to the drop location and queue the drop command. Repeat.

The basic idea is to identify small routines that you will have to execute during a game and to automate them. Imagine you are heavy supply stuck, but there is a battle. Go to your base select some SCVs and build a bunch of Supply Depots. Then queue them to the Minerals again and return to battle etc.

Good ways to increase your APM in the first 2-3 minutes in the game:

• Select your Main building and change the rally points to every Minerals patch in sequence.
• Hotkey your Main and a production facility to different hotkeys and switch between them while observing their production progress.
• Take your first few units and train your spreading.
• Send out scouts and micro them.

Now you should be able to press the buttons very fast and reach up to 100+ APM. But the most important part is to know where to invest your APM. You have to get a feeling for this by playing a lot of games.

If you are not issuing commands all the time, you are doing it wrong. Use this time to check the progress of your production facilities and upgrades. Send out a single scout or make a drop.

Answer 4

Practice. Practice. Practice!

One thing the pros do is they maximize their APM, even during the first couple minutes of the game when there isn't much to do. Right when the match starts, and you're moving workers to the minerals, send all of them to one mineral patch, but then divide into smaller groups while they're moving, and manually send them to other patches.

Watch some videos of what pros with high APM are doing. A lot of their actions aren't entirely necessary, but it gets them in a high-APM mode.

Answer 5

Blizzard has a sticky poll titled, "APM Racing" which focuses on APM.

Some key takeaways from the comments

• Its more about strategy then how many times you can click the mouse
• Harass with your worker scout. Will definitely get that early-ish APM up with good reason.
• Lot of APM buffing I've seen is just mindless repeats of basic commands and I'm just not into that. I've seen my APM spike around 170 but thats just me needing to cast FG or use Inject Larva after morphing a bunch of units.
• The people going "APM is for noobs that spam", it keeps your hand warm during the early games. its difficult to go from 30 at the start to 200+ later, when you really need it. Cold hands= slower reactions and it gets harder to click stuff properly, resulting in misclicks.

Answer 6

Try practicing at Guitar Hero! I can play with 300+ APM and make my hands a blur and also play tracks like "GH3 Solo Suite 3" on 95-99%.

It's not necessary though, but it's very good to spam a lot at the start of the game so you get in the "ZONE".

APMs purpose is a lot of things, everything really. But most importantly MULTITASKING: being able to spread creep, inject larva, cast fungals transfuse abduct etc, in a matter of seconds efficiently is key to victory.