I've become a big user of D&D Beyond, after spending most of my early D&D years pretty strictly with paper character sheets. While the service is, I think, very convenient (on principle I feel like I ought to buy the new Eberron and Forgotten Realms books physically, but for the time being I only have the digital versions) there are areas where the programmers have certain interpretations of the rules that I disagree with. These interpretations might not even be meant as a strict reading of the rules as much as a way to get the character sheets working, so they are to be taken with a real grain of salt.
As an example, you can get the plan for Gleaming Armor as an Artificer, but in D&D Beyond, but the site makes you pick, say, Gleaming Half Plate, and then that's what you get to replicate. This does make it pretty simple for you to then make the replicated item, but I think that as a DM, I'd rule that you could swap that plan for any other gleaming armor any time you wanted (such as when you hit level 3 as an Armorer).
In the Tasha's version of the Armorer, they explicitly called out that the weapons built into your armor counted as valid targets for your Artificer Infusions - your level 9 feature made it clear that your helm, boots, chestpiece, and weapon were now separately valid targets for infusions. This meant that with Enhanced Weapon, you could make your Thunder Gauntlet or Lightning Launcher into a +1 (and later +2) weapon.
There is some ambiguity, though, with the new version. Our armor has a built-in weapon, but how does that relate to replicating items? Each of the now-three weapons is still considered a simple weapon (Thunder Pulse and Force Demolisher being melee, Lightning Launcher ranged,) but if you're wearing magic armor (which you probably are, either from something found in-game or created via replicate magic item,) does that mean that the weapon is already bearing the, say, +1 bonus to AC as its sole magical enchantment?
I think the Rules as Written here are a little unclear, and I could even concede a very strict reading that prevents you from creating separate magic weapons with Replicate Magic Item. But that strict reading, in my opinion, goes against the fantasy and spirit of the subclass, and it also hobbles them unfairly - while a Battle Smith is going to be able to wield any number of magic weapons (even beyond the possible replicated items) the Armorer is already limited to the type of weapon linked to their armor model (taking the True Strike cantrip does open up some additional possibilities, though it doesn't get to scale with Extra Attack).
Thus, while I recommend going over this detail with your DM before you pick this subclass, I'd encourage most DMs to interpret things in the following ways:
-That a suit of armor that is turned into Arcane Armor will gain one of these weapons, as clearly shown in the subclass features. (This isn't even an interpretation so much as plain reading of the text.)
-That an Armorer can select one of these special weapons and replicate them via a Replicate Magic Item plan like +1 Weapon.
-That these weapons can be "installed" as "modules" into the armor, replacing the unenhanced version of the weapon that comes naturally with the Arcane Armor.
-That the +1 bonus to attacks and damage gained at level 9 with these weapons will stack with the magical bonuses they get from a magical replication.
This last aspect, I think, open to question: my initial interpretation of the +1 bonus was that this was something of a consolation prize for the lack of magical enhancements. WotC has a nasty habit of failing to give subclasses with built-in weapons (like Soulknives or Beast Barbarians) bonuses to match the kind of magical enhancements that will aid other magic users. But if we use this more generous interpretation, it means that, instead, the weapons will at least be able to scale up slightly beyond our replicated items. Our +2 Weapon plan could now effectively give us a +3 weapon, which is the best kind of +X weapon.
So, now, there's an interesting question:
At level 10, we can start replicating +2 weapons. But at level 14, we can make Flame Tongue Weapons.
Flame Tongues used to only be swords, but now any melee weapon can count. Thus, while the Lightning Launcher is out of luck, with our above stipulations, we ought to be able to interpret the Thunder Pulse and Force Demolisher as valid Flame Tongue weapon options.
Previously, I'd always kind of doubted the power of a Flame Tongue because it lacks the attack bonus that even a +1 weapon gets. But I think as I've come to understand the math of D&D a little better, I think that adding 2d6 fire damage on each swing, which is already far-exceeding any +X bonus to damage, is even going to overcome the +X attack bonus.
I wanted to present a kind of hypothetical scenario to compare the damage output of these options. Just to get the full potential, I'm going to also jump to level 15, where all the Armorer weapons get a damage boost. The Lightning Launcher remains the highest damage weapon for an Armorer (thanks to the once-per-turn bonus d6) but the Force Demolisher gets a decent boost by changing from 1d10 to 2d6 (it's not as big as the Lightning Launcher's 1d6 to 2d6, but it's certainly better than the Thunder Pulse's 1d8 to 1d10. And, of course, you can't make a Flame Tongue Lightning Launcher anyway).
Technically the Flame Tongue requires a bonus action to activate, and it goes out if it's stowed, sheathed, or dropped, but here's an interesting question: as a built-in weapon for our armor, will we ever do that? We might want to deactivate it if we're trying not to be noticed (as it shed bright light) but I think battle-to-battle there's not really any reason to worry about it being out there, all aglow. While activated, the weapon deals 2d6 additional fire damage. That's pretty massive - that's a whole Greatsword's worth of damage.
So, if we're level 15, let's talk about a few assumptions: first, we've probably capped our Intelligence at this point, having had general feats at levels 4, 8, and 12 by now (even if we take half feats at each of these, we can start with a 17 in Intelligence and thus cap it by 12). So, we have a +5 to Intelligence and we have a +5 Proficiency bonus. Our level 9 subclass features is adding +1 to attack and damage rolls with any built-in weapon.
If we take a +2 weapon (which we can get as early as level 10) we're going to be looking at a Force Demolisher that has a +13 to hit (+5 from Int, +5 from PB, +2 from magic, +1 from Improved Armorer) and deals 2d6+8 damage, or 15 on average, twice per turn.
If we take a Flame Tongue, and assume it's active when combat starts, we'll have a +11 to hit, and we'll be doing 2d6+2d6+6 damage, or 20 damage on average (13 Force and 7 Fire), twice per turn.
In the DMG, a 15th-level character accounts for 3,300 xp in a low difficulty combat encounter, 5,400 in a moderate encounter, and 7,800 in a high difficulty encounter. Generally, I think most encounters are probably going to be low-difficulty, unless your DM prefers big, climactic fights (I'm admittedly in the middle of an adventure with my party that is explicitly individual fights with special objectives each day, so these are all tuned high).
I like Vampire Nightbringers as monsters (I enjoy vampires in general as monsters,) which are CR 7, and thus worth 3,900 xp. For a low-difficulty encounter, you'd want the players to slightly outnumber them at level 15. The important thing is that these guys have an AC of 16, which is actually pretty average for monsters of this CR.
My guess is that the +X weapon will actually do better against higher AC monsters, where the bonus to hit counts for more, but let's do some quick math here:
+2 Weapon:
Hitting on a mere 3 or higher, we've got an 90% chance to hit. Our hits do 15 damage, and our crits add 7. So, 15x90% is 13.5 and 7x5% is .35, so we're doing 13.85 damage per attack, or 27.7 damage per turn (you know, before letting our homunculus use our spell-storing item to blast with a lightning bolt, but that'll be the same with both weapon types).
Flame Tongue:
Now, we're only hitting on a 5 or higher (still pretty good) so we've got an 80% to hit. Our hits are doing 20 damage, while our crits are adding a pretty chunky 14 damage.
20x80% is 16, and 14x5% is .7, so that's 16.7 damage per attack, and thus 33.4 damage per turn.
So, yeah, the Flame Tongue is clearly performing better. Note, of course, that there are a lot of monsters that are immune to Fire. If you have both plans, you might consider swapping Flame Tongue out for +2 weapons if you're, say, going to the Elemental Plane of Fire or the Nine Hells, fighting Red Dragons, or anything like that (fiends that aren't devils are also often resistant to fire).
But what about a fight against something with a tougher AC? In the past I've generally set boss-level AC at tier 3 at 20. An Ancient White Dragon would not be an unreasonable fight for a 15th level party, and they have an AC of 20. So, how does the math work out there?
+2 Weapon:
Now we only hit on a 7 or higher (70%). 15x70% is 10.5, with the same crit bonus of .35, so we're looking at 10.85 damage per attack (assuming we can get within range to hit it - honestly a dragon might be a good time to go Infiltrator mode anyway) for 21.7 damage per turn.
Flame Tongue:
And here, we're hitting on a 9 or higher, so 60%. 20x60% is 12, and then we have that crit bonus of .7, so 12.7 per attack. We're thus hitting for 25.4 damage per turn.
Yeah, Flame Tongue sure is proving itself, though the gap here is a little smaller - 5.7 better against a 16 AC versus 3.7 against an AC of 20.
The question, then, is whether there's an AC a monster can get that is high enough to make the +2 weapon better.
The highest innate AC of a monster in 5E is 25, found on the Tarrasque (and, unless I'm mistaken, its fellow CR 30 creatures, Tiamat's fiendish form from Tyranny of Dragons, as well as the Aspects of Bahamut and Tiamat, though they might not actually have the same AC). Sul Khatesh, from Eberron: Rising from the Last War has a native AC of 22, but can cast Shield at will to push that to 27, but I'm also hesitant to use her as an example because she can likely shut down all our magic weapons anyway (though the fact that we deal Force or other non-kinetic damage types with our built in weapons could help as a workaround, if the DM doesn't rule that antimagic fully shuts down our whole armor suit).
The problem with the Tarrasque is that it's immune to Fire damage, making the Flame Tongue clearly not useful.
The Colossus might be our best bet here - it doesn't have any immunities we care about, and has an AC of 23 (it's also the highest CR monster in the new Monster Manual other than the Tarrasque, at 25. I don't think there are any creatures in all of 5E with a 26, 27, or 29 CR).
Now, facing a Colossus at level 15 would be a really scary prospect (especially with its ability to disintegrate people with its Divine Beam). We could just assume we're higher level, which would only shift things by 1 given the boost to our proficiency bonus, but I'm going to just say that this is a very dire scenario instead.
So, with an AC of 23, we're looking at the following:
+2 Weapon:
We now hit on a 10 or higher (still more often than not, but only just barely at 55%).
So, 15x55% is 8.25, and then the usual .35 crit bonus, giving us 8.6 damage per attack, for 17.2 damage per turn.
Flame Tongue:
We're going to be whiffing a lot now - we have a 45% hit chance.
20x45% is 9, and then we've got our crit bonus of .7 as before, so yeah, 9.7 damage per attack and thus 19.4 damage per turn.
So yes, it really turns out that that extra 2d6 damage is basically always going to be better for us than the higher attack bonus. Monsters ACs just don't scale up high enough to make that little +2 bonus over the Flame Tongue worth it.
Again, though, there are a lot of monsters that are immune to fire, so it's truly campaign dependent. If you could get a Vicious Weapon variant (which adds 2d6 of the weapon's normal damage type, which would be fantastic on a Force Demolisher) that would be preferable, but it's not an option.
So, unless your campaign is very fiery, I'd really suggest you consider getting the Flame Tongue for your weapon enchant, assuming you can even do that.
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