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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mephista" data-source="post: 9809130" data-attributes="member: 6786252">The level 9 feature is part of it for a lot of people, yeah; if your party/bastion buys, makes, or finds their own armors and shields instead of using RMI, then the extra plans do nothing. No one likes having to trade out a very flavorful customization ability for a dead feature.  The +1 weapons is better than nothing, but by this point the rest of your party should have a full set of Rare weapons, so +2 at least, while starting to eye Very Rare equipment moving into tier 3. So, it still feels bad, even if you ignore the 2014 ability.  I also said the base class kind of nerfed the subclass, because it now has a focus on using Spell Storing Items and replenishing magic wands via level 6 ability, which is directly at odds with having weapon attacks. Your weapon attacks will only generally deal 1 point more of damage than a basic Magic Missile spell even after Extra Attack at level 5, and general consensus is that you have no real way of upgrading your weapons outside of the subclass features. At this point in time, I was assuming that doing Wand of Magic Missile shinanigans was stronger than your actual subclass features, which made me kind of dismissive of the subclass.Upon reflection, I realized you can kind of hand off the SSI and wands to your homoculi. So, assuming you can keep it alive, that's actually better damage to do things that way.Dreadnaught is flat out a trap option - not only is size it not dungeon-friendly, but its pushing is actively worse than a Medium critter using Push Mastery. Even furthermore, one of the benefits of being big in 5e is grappling dragons and giants. Dreadnaught is bad at grappling. Infiltrator is a bit of a misnomer. This option doesn't really give you the ability to infiltrate anywhere; the only sneaky thing Infiltrator gets is the dampening field, which offsets the penalty from Heavy Armor. You -could- go with scale mail instead, and make a stealthy build, but those are all options that other Artificers have, and getting advantage on stealth is really easy for an artificer.  Infiltrator actually wants to be a ranged unit in heavy armor, especially since their weapon is lightning - loud and flashy. I won't call it a trap, but its definitely second fiddle. But guardian does seem to be good, especially after I realized something.  Shields. The guardian's attacks basically work when any part of your armor coming into contact with the enemy, so in theory a shoulder check or kick work just as well, so nothing stops you from using two shields, and getting two different defensive bonuses. Though, it should be noted that you're more susceptible to grapples than 2014.At level 9, you get Hypnotic Pattern and Lightning Bolt, and at level 11 you can put it on a SSI; again I forgot about giving it to the homoculus.  Level 13 you get greater invisibility and fire shield for some actual combat buffs that work well with the Armorer. Passwall and Wall of Force round out this at level 17, which... don't seem to vibe with the previous build at all?The level 15 dreadnaught ability is once again terrible. Larger size increase with no real benefit other than finally pushing Large creatures, and 1.5 average damage increase.  Infiltrator gets no actual infiltration powers, but some decent kiting abilities, but its coming online rather late game; nothing amazing. Guardian gets a damage boost and a very good reaction ability that synergizes well with its level 3 one. So, overall I do think I'm slightly mistaken about Armorer, but only if we're talking Guardian. The other parts are bad, and that creates a rather negative impression of the entire subclass.</blockquote>

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