Spreadsheet heaven - Armory hell

I have been playing WoW for 15 months now and in recent times, during my perambulations around the many excellent WoW blogs out there, I keep bumping into references to this Hunter Spreadsheet thing.

Well this week I have tracked the little rascal down and started to play around with it. Let me tell you this is a very impressive piece of work. I know a bit about spreadsheets, heaven knows I work for a company where 'death by spreadsheet' is recognised as an occupational health issue, and this one is cracker.

The only serious problem I have had using it, is actually to do with the WoW Europe Armory. For some reason it takes a dogs age for ingame changes to my character or pet to feed through into the armory. Since the last time the armory page was updated I have acquired my first, second and third epic items, re-specced, tamed a new pet and got some more achievements, none of which show up. This is a bitch because the lovely import function in the spreadsheet drags across my 'old' gear which I then have to manually edit.

Apart from that small irritation though, it all works brilliantly. How brilliantly? I hear you all ask - well after using it for a week I have raised my performance in 5 mans from borderline possible in heroics to more than ready to start Naxx 10 mans. My DPS has gone up from around 950 to 1500 plus. And in fact last night in UK heroic I finished second on the meters to a better specced SV hunter and was only 200 dps behind him.

All credit to the fine folks responsible for this excellent piece of work, first Cheeky now Shandara, and all the other contributors who have made it what it is. Check it out here: Shandara's Spreadsheet and enjoy.