Apm was a joke i think
If ur oppo was in gold I’ve seen few where they are really more spamming APM and missing basics but usually APM matters refers to higher skill
Imagine being so low IQ you conflate APM after a game with a player’s average APM across all their games. 
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Sure, but you have to take representation into account. Protoss representation is drastically higher than Terran representation. For the majority of the pro scene, as well as the ladder, Protoss is pretty clearly favored, even if things are fairly balanced at the very top.
As far as the OP. APM correlates with skill (and likely has an even stronger correlation with current potential skill), but isn’t equal to it. Note that Bronze players have higher average APM than silver players. Clearly there’s something going on there.
There’s also the problem of APM being race dependent, which should be obvious given the significant differences in APM between players of different races in all leagues that are way too large to simply correlate to race imbalance.
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Representation cancels itself out pretty well on its own. More protoss means more PvPs meaning more protoss players get eliminated from tournaments no matter who wins.
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Bronze is 0.31 higher than Silver (aka 0.4%), but have 1/6th as many games in the sample. At the tail end of the distribution the APM is going to approach a lower limit. In other words Bronze is going to be lower but only very slightly lower than Silver. At 1/6th as many games and only 0.31 APM, it’s definitely just a matter of variance from the lower sample size.
The race dependence of APM is quite literally the point the OP makes.
To the contrary, significant differences in APM requirements across all leagues is quite literally required to establish that APM requirements for a race are higher. You can’t claim more APM is needed for Zerg if you are excluding some of the people who play Zerg. If you are grouping by Zerg, it has to apply to all those with the tag of “Zerg”. This requires APM differences to manifest at all skill levels.
There is a certain speed at which you have to play each race to achieve each skill level and the average APM of each league clearly defines what that is.
This is only partially true. While yes, it is required to make such a claim, it does not mean that such a claim is actually true, because not all APM is equal, and the races don’t require the same types of APM. Sometimes it is necessary to make small sacrifices to APM for the sake of timing something better, or one race will have less opportunities for the actions that take the least time - this is most notably the case with Protoss, due to the prevalence of spellcasting, the higher supply costs on units, and the priority placed on protecting specific units. Even in periods when Protoss was UP, the APM distribution by league wasn’t much different than it is now.
If you look at 2018 and compare, for example, the APM shifts are fairly consistent across all 3 races, except Protoss in GM in 2018 had less APM than they do this year on average, despite Protoss being weaker at the time/having notably less GM and Masters representation than, while all 3 races in most leagues, and the other 2 races in GM, averaged higher APM than now (GM for the other 2 races being notably higher than now) - that’s directly contradictory to what should be expected when Protoss gets stronger and has inflated representation particularly in GM.
Looking at APM distribution only shows that there’s a strong correlation between APM and skill (which should already be obvious to everyone), nothing more. It doesn’t have any bearing on the state of balance, without a lot more context. Other indicators, like player distribution and win rates (adjusting/accounting for that distribution), are much better indicators.
Eh, usually Batz outright denies it as even being a possibility, so I assumed otherwise. The OP has no mention of how race choice impacts APM. It only says “APM = skill”.
That’s literally the exact point that is made in the OP. If you are trying to disprove my argument, you are doing an extremely poor job.
Uh, no. CLT dictates that all noise with a finite variance cancels out with an adequate sample size.
= Easier.
Blah blah not relevant.
Oh OK so you won’t mind if we make Protoss require 10,000 APM to micro just one stalker, right? Are you honestly going to pretend that an APM requirement of 10,000 to micro 1 stalker wouldn’t impact win-rates? Reality check: APM requirements are 99%+ of the difficulty in playing SC2.
THE PLAYER DISTRIBUTIONS HIGHLY CORRELATE WITH APM DIFFERENCES BECAUSE THE WINRATES CREATE APM DIFFERENCES ACROSS LEAGUES. YOU CAN’T HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER. WHEN PROTOSS IS OP, LOWER APM PLAYERS ARE MOVED TO HIGHER LEAGUES CREATING A POSITIVE SKEW IN THE APM DISTRIBUTION. APM DISTRIBUTION SKEW IS QUITE LITERALLY ANALOGOUS TO WIN-RATE SKEWS BECAUSE THE TWO ARE MUTUALLY CAUSALLY LINKED. IMBALANCE IS QUITE LITERALLY ANALOGOUS TO SAYING ONE RACE REQUIRES LESS APM. IT IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR IMBALANCE TO EXIST WITHOUT IT MOVING LOWER APM PLAYERS HIGHER ON THE LADDER.
IMBALANCE=APM SKEW.
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It’s absolutely relevant. By the logic that APM = skill, then Protoss players would have always belonged half a league or so down (obviously not being exact here), on average, but player/race distribution across leagues directly contradicts that idea, given the reasonable assumption that race choice is mostly independent of player skill.
The change in relative APM averages by race across leagues was negligible between 2018 and 2021, despite the obvious changes to the state of balance. The case where it would have been expected for Protoss APM to decrease the most relative to the other races due to a significant representation shift (GM), Protoss APM instead increased…
So, clearly there’s something else going on. APM can’t be looked at independent of all other factors and associated with skill. It’s dependent on too many variables, like playstyles and race choice of individual players. Some strategies result in more or less APM just by nature of the types of actions utilized the most.
You talk of APM requirements, but you’re ignoring that different actions take different amounts of time to complete… Not all actions are equal in their contribution to APM, which should be pretty obvious to anyone who has ever played this game and looked at the APM counter for their own replays.
What sorts of actions are utilized more or less by any particular strategy/race will impact the APM/EPM counter, despite no difference in the speed/skill of the player.
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Oh wow he accidentally found the correct conclusion.
Factually false. It goes from 75 in Bronze to 300 in GM.
Factually false. Protoss APM in GM follows the same trend.
Uh, no. APM correlates with win-rate. This is a fact. Balance affects win-rates. Balance affects APM. Imbalance gives a boost to win-rate which reduces average apm because players with lower APM achieve a higher performance reducing average APM per league. This is a fact. APM requirements affect balance since the steeper the requirements the fewer people who meet those requirements and therefore suffer from a reduced win-rate as a product of not having enough APM.
It’s not a matter of discussion. It’s a matter of “can you understand simple statistical concepts” / “read basic graphs”.
The fact that you wouldn’t directly answer my question with an honest answer shows how duplicitous you are being. Either admit that 10,000 APM blink-stalker micro requirements would make Protoss literally unplayable, nuking their win-rate to 0%, or we are done here. We can’t have a conversation if you live in La La Land. I am not playing pretend. This isn’t a conversation about your imagination. This is a conversation about the realities of the design of SC2.
APM requirements heavily impact balance. Balance heavily impacts APM requirements. Balance and APM requirements are virtually indistinguishable concepts.
I repeat: all noise with finite variance cancels out according to the CLT. That is clear as day in the charts in the OP. It is not a matter of opinion. You are contradicting established fact. APM could not have a correlation of 0.998 with league if other factors didn’t cancel out.
Good luck man. You’re going to need it 
god speed. Many of us have tried to speak reason already in the past - it all falls on deaf ears.
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Starcraft has always been a lot about APM. This is not chess. You are very rarely going to out-think your opponent, but you can consistently out-click him when you have 400 APM.
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Amen. The only thing worse than bad micro is no micro. So being able to smash out 400 apm and manage all 7 bases and all 200 supply of army is worth infinitely more than letting battles play out on their own without your control/input. It’s less about what you do, and more that you can actually do it, that matters.
Bad builds in the hands of Maru will win GSL. Maru’s best builds in the hands of a Bronze league player will net a 20% win-rate in Bronze league.
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