Starcraft – the difference between EPM and APM

starcraft-2

Blizzard introduced EPM as a new stat for watchers of Starcraft2 matches, in one of the last patches. I am a bit confused. What is the difference between EPM and APM? What does each include exactly in the count?

Best Answer

The notes for patch 1.4.3 state:

  • APM values displayed on the Leader Board are now calculated by counting every click and command that has been issued by the player.
  • EPM values displayed on the Leader Board are calculated by counting only actual commands issued by the player (Effective Actions Per Minute).

EPM is always smaller than APM since effective actions are a subset of all actions.
Time is measured in game time (aka Blizzard time), and it is not measured in real time.

As mentioned at a Team Liquid forum post, camera location commands (aka screen bookmarks) are not included in the calculations of APM and EPM.

Note that third party analysis tools often measure APM/EPM slightly differently to the Starcraft 2 software.

Currently (as of version 1.4.3.21029) there is a bug where EPM and APM values are reversed when viewing a replay. We should expect a fix sometime in a future patch.

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