How to Increase your APM (Actions per Minute)

Sep 4, 2010

Actions Per Minute is a measurement on how many times you click, select, or type within a minute. Most casual players have a average APM of about 50, while pro players easily hit the 200′s (with enough click spam).  The reason APM is so popular is because it pretty much measures how fast you can think or multitask. So usually a player with a high APM will dominate a player with a lower APM. Although, a lower APM player can easily triumph a higher APM player if they use their “actions” wisely. Listed below are some great ways to effectively increase your APM.

How Do I Raise My APM?

Learn The Hotkeys

The easiest way to improve your APM is to learn all of the hot keys for the race you intend to play competitively. Not only does it allow you to react faster, but it will allow you to multitask very easily. Actually learning every single hotkey is very difficult. I used this training method to learn them within a few days.

1. Join a Co-operative game against a medium-very hard computer, and select a race of your choice.
2. Once that game starts force yourself only to use the keyboard hot keys to build buildings or units. Beforehand you could’ve checked up on some of the basic hotkeys, if you haven’t it is okay you will figure them out quickly.
3. Now you will probably be tempted to use your mouse to build buildings or units, but refrain from doing so. I know it is difficult to do at first but after a few games it becomes second nature.

Work Your Way Up

Every game set a APM goal for yourself, and through the game try to reach the certain goal. Slowly but surely your APM will increase if you keep raising your goals.

Do not spam clicks to reach your goal, this does help the process of improving your APM. The only reason you should ever spam APM is when you need to warm yourself up before a game. I actually do it occasionally when im feeling sluggish, but other then that it doesn’t serve a purpose.

Stay Open Minded & Use Control Groups

When you are playing a game of Starcraft 2 it is very important that you dont focus to much on any single thing. In order to effectively play you have to learn to multitask under extremely straining situations, and manage many different things at once. So how exactly are you suppose to get around the map at lighting speeds?

By assigning control groups. A control group is pretty much anything that you select that is assigned a number of your choosing( 1-9) which can be accessed at anytime by hitting the number you assigned. If you ever watch Pro Games you can see the pro’s control groups directly above the toolbar in-game.

By using control groups you can quickly go back to a selected point without having to scroll all the way there, build units without looking at the production facility, or control a army while managing your base.

It Comes Natural

Eventually by playing many games your APM will increase naturally. You cannot completely change it overnight and expect it to stick. In order to improve your APM drastically you need to play Starcraft 2 consistently and learn from your mistakes. I know that sounds difficult but every player improves little by little even if they don’t know it as these changes are very subtle.

In South Korea pro Starcraft players push themselves to extremes by playing every single day for many hours at a time, and their APM reflects that with some of the best players reaching 250-300 actions per minute.