This will be the last in our compare-and-contrast series on the Artificer subclasses, because the Cartographer is a brand-new one.
I'll concede this is a bit redundant with my overview of the subclasses, but I was making a point to avoid direct comparisons.
So far, I think we've seen what were already pretty good subclasses get what I'd think are mostly buffs, while the Alchemist, which was always the weakest subclass, got more ambiguous changes.
The Battle Smith is probably the most powerful Artificer, largely because it can make use of powerful magic weapons and feats that relate to using weapons in ways that even the Armorer, the other "martial" artificer, can't. It also has a feature somewhat similar to the old version of a Paladin's Divine Smite.
Oh, and it's a pet class. The Steel Defender also might get an edge on the Beast Master Ranger's pet because Battle Smiths are already going to be maxing out their spellcasting stat that doubles as the pet's attack stat, while a Ranger is probably splitting their power between Dexterity and Wisdom.
Let's take a look:
Battle Smith spells:
No actual changes here to the list itself - "Branding Smite" was renamed Shining Smite, and actually the two smite spells here did get redesigned to now let you cast them after you hit the target, which is a big power boost (they also don't take up concentration, so you won't have to drop a concentration spell, which is another major buff.) Conjure Barrage is also a better spell now, dealing higher damage, force damage, and also, crucially, avoiding friendly fire (which is massively better for a 60-foot cone). (You also don't need to toss a piece of ammo into the air to cast it, so you can just hold up a melee weapon).
Basically, the list is unchanged, but the spells themselves largely got better. (Oh yeah, same with Mass Cure Wounds).
Tools of the Trade includes the old Smith's Tools proficiency, but we also get our crafting time reduced when crafting weapons. Once again, this is much better if you actually have the downtime to do crafting, and a DM that allows you to craft magic items.
Battle Ready gets one slight buff: you can use a weapon with which you're proficient (so, basically all of them) as a spellcasting focus (useful if you don't have a replicated weapon). Otherwise it's the same.
Now, the Steel Defender:
One actual nerf here is that you can no longer heal the Steel Defender with the Mending cantrip (the Artillerist can still do this with their Eldritch Cannons).
The Defender's AC now scales with your Intelligence, rather than having a flat value that upgrades at a higher level. It's likely to start off the same and end up the same (unless you can push your Intelligence to 22 or higher). It now adds your PB to all of its ability checks and saving throws, not just the two skills and two saves that the old version had, though it no longer has effectively expertise in perception.
Force Empowered Rend now hits slightly harder, scaling up with Intelligence rather than PB (but getting an additional two on top of that so it'll still be better even in tier 4).
And lastly, its HP is now 5 plus 5 times your Artificer level (so, 20 at 3 and 105 at 20,) which is a very slight nerf as the old version was 2+ your Int + 5 x your Artificer level. So you're probably down like, 2 hit points overall. Not a big deal.
Level 5:
Extra Attack actually got a little... buff? You can now swap out one of your own attacks to give your Steel Defender another Force-Empowered Rend attack.
How likely is this to be the right call? Well, the rend does 1d8+2+your Intelligence. If you think of that +2 as essentially changing your d8 to a d12 (1d8+2 and 1d12 have an average damage of 6.5) then you can imagine that if you have a weapon that deals less than 1d12, this could be a buff. However, you're also probably going to have a weapon with some sort of damage bonus, and unless you are using a Wand of the War Mage or something else to buff your spell attacks, you probably have a better hit chance thanks to the ease with which you can get a +1 weapon.
It is certainly plausible that this will sometimes be optimal (maybe you're just too far out of range, even,) but only in certain situations. Still, it's something we didn't get before, so it's a buff for sure.
Level 9:
Arcane Jolt is identical, except for some wording changes.
Level 15:
Improved Defender no longer has the Defender's AC bump, but that's already kind of accounted for with its stat block (if you max out your Intelligence, which probably happens before this point, you hit that AC earlier). The other elements of the feature are the same.
Overall Thoughts:
Once again, we have to get pretty granular to see the differences here, though I think the spell changes in particular (which actually happened last year with the PHB) are quite good for Battle Smiths.
One note, though, is that a lot of great weapon-based feats now have prerequisites that might push you to have more Strength than you were planning on. Great Weapon Master, for example (probably the best martial feat) now requires 13 Strength to pick up, which means that between the 14 Dex we need to get the most out of our medium armor and then the Intelligence and Constitution we want, we might find ourselves spread a little thin.
While we can use our Steel Defender to put spells like Dragon's Breath on, we probably want to instead put that on a Homunculus Servant. Because we don't use up a material component for Conjure Barrage (even if it used to just be a single piece of ammo) means we can stick it in the new-and-improved Spell-Storing Item. If your DM allows the Homunculus to carry the item that you stored this in, that's great. But you could also give it to your Steel Defender if they rule that the Homunculus is too small. While the Steel Defender is usually portrayed as a robot dog of some sort, it can technically take any shape you want. Another use for it could be Aura of Vitality, which could give you a very large amount of healing over a day (200d6 worth over ten minutes if you have a +5 to Int at this point. That's like a very slow Mass Heal!)
And with that, we might be coming to the end of how many posts I can get out of this book. I haven't actually gotten the other Forgotten Realms book. I am torn: I like having the physical books and supporting my local game store, but boy do I really only use the digital versions (a shame, because the paper versions of the core rulebooks are laid out in a very sensible way that gets lost in the endless scrolling of a D&D Beyond copy). Again, there's no earlier version of the Cartographer to actually compare to.
Now, the question will be whether we get an actual published version of the Reanimator subclass. I have a feeling they might do a series of these quick supplementary books for previously-visited settings like Ravenloft. What I hope is that the policy moving forwards will be that they can publish books that relate to non-core books. This one does make explicit mention of Rising from the Last War, like adventures featuring monsters from that book. So that's my hope that the Artificer isn't a "dead" class from here on out.
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