Project Defeat
A gear / talent / raid comp planner for World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Classic (Anniversary), Phase 2.
Open the live app →
What it does
- Character planner. Pick a faction, race, class and spec, then fill every slot from real Phase 2 best-in-slot rankings, including gems and enchants. You see your stats update as you go.
- Gear comparison and upgrades. Compare two items inside the set you're actually wearing, or rank every legal upgrade for a slot.
- Talents. Talent trees for all nine classes, with real icons and rank descriptions.
- DPS simulation. An estimated DPS for the 20 damage specs against a fixed raid boss. Rotations are still being worked on (see known limitations).
- Raid composition. Seat a 10 or 25-player raid and see which buffs each group actually gets. You can export the seating chart as an image for Discord.
- Raids. Loot tables for every Phase 1 and 2 raid, plus the steps to get attuned.
- Professions. The game's profession tab: set your skill and every recipe on the path to 375 takes its colour, with trainer stops, reagents and each gathering range's loop on its TBC zone map; "Which two" ranks every profession by what it makes for your spec.
- Import from the game. A small addon exports your character, so you can open the planner already wearing your gear.
- Share a build as a link. Nothing is uploaded; the whole build rides in the URL.
Using it
Everything runs in your browser. There are no accounts and no server. Theres no need to make one.
- Open the live app and choose Character Planner.
- Create your character, or press Import your character from the game if you use the addon.
- Press Equip the recommended set to start from the BiS list, then swap pieces from there.
To export your character from the game, see addon/README.md.
Run it locally
Requires Node.js 22 or newer.
npm install
npm run dev
| Command | What it does |
|---|
npm run dev | Start the dev server |
npm run build | Type-check and build for production |
npm run lint | Run ESLint |
npm run test | Run the Playwright test suite (run npx playwright install first) |
npm run brain | Regenerate the Obsidian project notes in brain/ |
npm run changelog | Regenerate the daily dev log |
Built with React, TypeScript, Vite, Anime.js and Playwright. It deploys to GitHub Pages on every push to main.
Project layout
src/ the app (domain data and rules, features, components)
tests/ Playwright tests
tools/ scripts that fetch and prepare game data
public/ icons, maps, raid art and fonts the app ships
addon/ the in-game export addon
discord-bot/ plan for a Discord bot (not built yet)
docs/ everything else: features, roadmap, design notes, research, dev log
brain/ generated Obsidian notes that map the codebase
Docs
Coming next: a Discord bot
A bot that answers questions/requests in Discord from the same data as the app: /bis fury warrior for a
spec's BiS list, /whodrops, /loot karazhan, /attune, /farm fel iron, and /import to list
upgrades from your in-game export. It will run on a Raspberry Pi. See the
plan.
The redesign: being brought into the app
Research into how 25 gaming companies and player tools design their sites in 2024–2026
(findings) led to clickable design prototypes
of every tab, walked through with the owner one tab at a time, three designs per step. Their animation is tuned to
TBC by this research. Try them: the
prototype gallery is published beside the app.
Every tab's design is decided (2026-10-12), and since 2026-10-24 every decided design is in the live app, following
the port plan:
| Step | What | State |
|---|
| 0 | The look: dark glass panels, Marcellus and Figtree, a colour and a still backdrop per tab, the phase on every screen | Done, 2026-10-12 |
| 1 | Spec Tier Lists: a board of spec icons from Wowhead's three lists, a card for any spec, and a switch to Wowhead's tiers against what players actually parse (archon.gg) | Done, 2026-10-12 |
| 2 | Raids: a boss journal with your spec's picks, who in your raid wants each drop, and a search across all five raids | Done, 2026-10-13 |
| 3 | Professions: the game's profession window, and which two to take | Done (2026-10-17): recipes coloured at your skill, trainer stops, reagents, each range's loop on its TBC map; "Which two" with your character's two professions. The node refresh of the maps rework waits for Wowhead to answer scripted requests again |
| 4 | Simulation: what to do next (your stat priority, your best upgrades with Equip, then the estimate) with the damage sources and how far to trust the number | Done, 2026-10-17 |
| 5 | Raid Composition: the planning table with a click-to-fill palette, Undo and the example roster, then what one more seat would add and who fixes what is missing, you can also export this do bring it to your discord server to show others what the raid night will look like. | Done, 2026-10-17 |
| 6 | The Character Planner, one sub-tab at a time: Build (the share card, and a read-first report on the paste box) and Ranked Gear (Wowhead's order slot by slot as game tooltips, and where each item drops) done 2026-10-18; Compare (your item's tooltip beside another's, with the trade in one sentence), Buffs (filled in from your raid and your seat in it, with icons) and Gear (the game's character sheet with the hit cap in plain words for every spec, and "What's left" with one-press fixes) done 2026-10-19; Talents (the game's talent window for every class, wowsims' preset where it has one, and "What's off" with one-press fixes) done 2026-10-22 | Done, 2026-10-22 |
| 7 | The scene: the prototypes' 3D crystal-and-water scene behind every section in its tab's colour and detail, with the motion each tab was waiting for (tiles landing, a learned talent's pulse, a light per raid group), as an optional layer: on by default with a switch, downloaded only where it runs, and the still backdrop with reduced motion, without WebGL or on a weak device |
To pick the work back up, read the top of docs/dev-log/HANDOFF.md.
The app stays on Phase 2 on purpose, even though Phase 3 is live.
Status
A working planner, focused on Phase 2 and on DPS specs. Healer and tank math still runs but isn't the focus. Every dataset comes from a pinned source, and wherever the app can't model something, it says so on screen. This is my biggest project so far and it's still growing.
License
MIT. World of Warcraft and its artwork are trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment. This is a fan-made tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard.
