D&D 5E No need

[TrueBagelMan]

Nevermind

 

[MarkB]

Yeah, it's pretty poor. It basically relies upon you having it positioned next to an opponent, and having nothing better to do with your bonus action that turn. I can see it happening, but not more than maybe once or twice in a combat.

Plus it still takes an action to cast it in the first place.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

So at 13th level a AT gets the ability to use there mage hand to gain advantage on attack rolls against that creature. Am I reading this wrong or is this a really bad ability since you can’t move it in the same bonus action?

"Really bad" is definitely subjective. I can understand why someone might be very disappointed by it but it is a new way to get advantage with a bonus action, and Rogues love advantage. It is generally cumbersome to set up, but bear in mind that your Arcane Trickster Mage Hand can be invisible so it's not like enemies know to avoid it and it can be handy in an ambush situation. If you continuously cast Mage Hand for some other reason and have it up when combat happens to start it is a bit more useful than if you have to spend an action casting Mage Hand.

It is generally not as convenient as your Familiar giving you Help, but Help only works for the first attack. You gain access to this at the same level you can first potentially get the Haste spell and hence an additional attack. It also sets you up to get advantage, and hence sneak attack, if you make an attack of opportunity on that enemy. In theory it would also combine well with a normal extra attack feature, but we're talking about level 18 minimum before that multiclass combo comes on line.

I'm not going to pretend that it's a great ability, but advantage is advantage, and advantage means sneak attack, and a good Rogue never complains about getting yet another way to generate sneak attack. And you can't expect Arcane Tricksters to get as good of abilities as other Rogues because their main subclass ability is getting to also cast Wizard spells, which is where the power is. Level 13 is when they get 3rd level magic.