I agree with this, and it works for a lot of players. But for some reason, I loved playing with real people on the ladder, learning crisis management while learning to macro at the same time.

My overall play took a huge hit as I hit higher leagues and had to try and keep practicing my macro, while dealing with more refined all-ins and needing to micro much better.

But one thing I've noticed from myself, after I keep playing in the meatgrinder, losing game after game because I slipped up somewhere, I improve across the board with all these things, AND APM. Since I'm trying to do all these things at once, really focusing on macro, but still working on other things as they come at me, my overall multi-tasking increases faster for me compared to if I just played a bot game over and over.

This is just me though, and I feel like people should try both the vs bot games, and playing on the ladder if they feel like they're up to it, as there is nothing like first hand experience when trying to become better.

Another reason why I like to play ladder vs bot games when practicing, is when you lose, it's usually much easier to see all the places you messed up at, and that makes it much easier to know what you really need to practice on.

=D glhf gg!