Overall I am pretty happy with the 2024 subclasses, but EK is an exception to this. I hate it.
Eldritch Knight was my favorite fighter subclass by far and it was the fighter I played the most with 2014 rules. Usually I dumped Intelligence, maxed Charisma and multiclassed with a Bard, Sorcerer or Warlock, usually with a 1-4 level dip in one of those.
Okay, a choice, but not one required by the choice of subclass.
When played that way in 2024 the class was awesome, Warmagic was not as effective as the Bladesinger extra attack but it was pretty darn fun. On the new EK, Warmagic gets a slight improvement and then a big nerf. It works with the attack action, not requiring an extra action, but it also only works with your Wizard spells. This means Eldritch Blast is not even usable with it and it means if you want to use it in combat you really need to have a good Intelligence, when most fighters dump intelligence.
Okay, so they made it so that you couldn't cherry pick it's features for other types of spellcasters. In general, that's a fantastic move and I approve.
"Most fighters dump intelligence" is not really germane to the conversation. First, we're not talking about
most fighters, we're talking about about a fighter subclass that specifically uses Int. Second, you are putting at least a 13 into CHR to allow multiclassing, so it seems it's perfectly viable to put points into it.
I have been trying to put together a good EK build and I can't figure one that is going to work for me. I am having trouble figuring why I would ever play an Eldritch Knight when a Valor Bard is available.
Because they are very different classes, doing different things? One is a full caster with some martial ability but not enough to keep up with dedicated martial characters, and the other is a full martial on a resilient chassis with some minor casting.
I understand that you haven't actually played your "favorite fighter subclass" ever -- you've just used it to pick up features for other casters. But if you play it, you would be able to understand how it differs from a valor bard. That you can't understand it is why you don't value the class and subclass, and why you are saying that you hate it -- not because of what it does, but because it actually enforces staying on theme and that's never what you did with it.