The New Armorer

 The Armorer, which was added to the Artificer subclass options in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, is, if I'm honest, my favorite Artificer subclass. I love a heavily-armored adventurer, and this one gives you the classic mech-suit fantasy. (The new art is also freaking awesome).

The Armorer focuses on its in-built weapons, which does present some interesting challenges for the class, which we'll talk about here. Notably, the new version adds a third mode for your magic armor, the Dreadnaught. Also, as I mentioned in the class overview, Armorers will very swiftly be able to get their hands on a set of plate armor, which gives them a big advantage in early levels. Let's take a look:

Armorer Spells:

1st: Magic Missile, Thunderwave

2nd: Mirror Image, Shatter

3rd: Hypnotic Pattern, Lightning Bolt

4th: Fire Shield, Greater Invisibility

5th: Passwall, Wall of Force

    Armorers have always had a great spell list, and I don't think there's been much change to it. Notably, Mirror Image is now even better for them, as the illusions also benefit from your AC (in other words, the target has to have been able to hit you before you worry about the illusions). Hypnotic Pattern is a fantastic crowd-control spell, as is Wall of Force.

Level 3:

Tools of the Trade:

You gain the following:

Armor Training: You gain training with Heavy Armor.

Tool Proficiency: You gain proficiency with Smith's Tools, or another Artisan's Tools of your choice if you already had this.

Armor Crafting: When you craft nonmagical or magic armor, the amount of time required to do so is halved.

    While we can probably assume you'll be using replicated magic armor, in theory at higher levels, with the right materials and a DM who allows it, you could eventually create permanent +3 Plate or the like, and halving the time would certainly be very welcome (though legendary armor like that will take an enormous amount of downtime).

Arcane Armor:

As a magic action, with Smith's Tools, you can turn a suit of armor you're wearing into Arcane Armor. The armor continues to have these benefits until you don another suit of armor or you die. The benefits are:

No Strength Requirement: If the armor normally has a Strength requirement, you can ignore it.

Quick Don and Doff: You can don or doff the armor as a Utilize action, and the armor can't be removed from you against your will.

Spellcasting Focus: You can use the Arcane Armor as a spellcasting focus for your Artificer spells.

    The ability to ignore Strength requirements means that Armorers are the one subclass in the game that can just not worry about having high Strength or Dexterity. I might still go for a +2 in Dex just to have decent AC at levels 1 and 2, but if you're starting at 3, you could truly dump both stats (though again, Dex is good for things like initiative and Dex saves).

Armor Model:

(This one's a big one.)

When you turn armor into your Arcane Armor or when you finish a short or long rest while you have Smith's Tools in hand, you can customize your armor to make it one of three models: Dreadnaught, Guardian, or Infiltrator.

Each model has certain benefits, as well as a special built-in weapon. You can use Intelligence instead of Strength or Dexterity for your attack and damage rolls with the build-in weapon.

Dreadnaught:

Force Demolisher: The armor has an arcane wrecking ball or sledge hammer that projects from your armor. The demolisher counts as a simple melee weapon with the reach property that does 1d10 Force damage on a hit. If you hit a creature that is at least one size smaller than you with the demolisher, you can push the creature up to 10 feet away from yourself or pull them up to 10 feet closer to you.

Giant Stature: As a bonus aciton, you can enlarge your armor for 1 minute. For the duration, your reach increases by 5 feet and if you are smaller than Large, your size becomes Large, along with anything you're wearing (if there isn't enough room, your size doesn't change). You can use this bonus action a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier per long rest.

    So: the push effect will generally not work unless you use Giant Stature, but once you do, you've effectively got a 15-foot reach, which is quite good, letting you strike from quite far away. This will enable some pretty strong hit-and-run tactics. And this hits as hard as a typical reach polearm (sadly you can't use this with Polearm Master, as it doesn't have the heavy property).

Guardian:

Thunder Pulse: You have some kind of pulse-generator (this used to be specifically gauntlets, but it's a little more open to interpretation now) that counts as a simple weapon that deals 1d8 thunder damage on a hit. A creature hit by the pulse has disadvantage on attack rolls against targets other than you until the start of your next turn.

Defensive Field: When you're bloodied, you can use a bonus action to gain temporary hit points equal to your Artificer level. You lose these temp HP if you doff the armor.

    So, the defensive field can't be used until you're bloodied, which is a bit scary, but it also notably doesn't have any limit in its uses. Essentially, if your bonus action is available, you can slow down a monster's ability to whittle you down. This is a big change from the old version, which could be used at any time but had limited uses. The Thunder Pulse, of course, gives you a "taunt" effect that makes you a real tank - though you'll be relying more on a high AC than any real damage reduction or even a ton of HP to survive the onslaught.

Inflitrator:

Lightning Launcher: You have a gemlike node on your armor that counts as a simple ranged weapon with a range of 90/300 that deals 1d6 Lightning damage on a hit. Once per turn, you can cause it to deal an extra 1d6 lightning to that target.

Powered Steps: Your speed increases by 5 feet.

Dampening Field: You have advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks (if your armor imposes disadvantage, these cancel each other out as normal, so you'll roll straight).

    I think this is unchanged from the old version. The Lightning Launcher will thus hit for 2d6 once per turn, making it a fairly powerful ranged weapon, though once you get Extra Attack it falls a little closer in line with others (slightly behind a Heavy Crossbow).

    You'll probably need to rely on spells if you find yourself out of range as a melee model or up in melee as an infiltrator, though I think True Strike is probably a strong option if you want a damage cantrip on this subclass.

Level 5:

Extra Attack:

This works like anyone else's Extra Attack.

    I'll confess it would have been cool to get the Bladesinger/Valor Bard/Eldritch Knight version of this, which would have made True Strike (or Booming Blade/Green-Flame Blade) obvious choices. Still, this makes us a real martial subclass.

Level 9:

Improved Armorer:

You gain the following:

Armor Replication: You can learn an additional plan for Replicate Magic Item, but it has to be in the Armor category. If you replace the plan, it also has to be an Armor plan. Additionally, you can create one additional item with the feature if it's an Armor item.

Improved Arsenal: You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls with the special weapons of your arcane armor model.

    Ok: this actually has a somewhat sad implication for a rules ambiguity that has persisted since Tasha's. If our built-in weapons for our armor are, you know, Simple Weapons, can we then use our Infusions/Replicate Magic Item features to make them, say, +2 weapons? While the fact that this +1 bonus is baked in, I worry that it then implies that no, we can't.

    On the other hand, though, it doesn't say that explicitly! And thus, if we were able to Replicate a +2 Lightning Launcher, would it then effectively be a +3 weapon? We need answers here, though I suspect the former interpretation is more likely. Still, nice to at least get some scaling for those weapons, I guess.

Level 15:

Perfected Armor:

Your various armor models get the following improvements:

Dreadnaught: The die of your Force Demolisher increases to 2d6 Force damage.

In addition, when you use Giant Stature, your reach increases by 10 feet, and your size can increase to your choice of Large or Huge and you get advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws for the duration.

    So, that's a damage increase of about 1.5 per hit - not enormous, but still a buff. The reach increase (I'm assuming not stacking with the old value) means that, with our reach weapon, we can now melee targets within 20 feet of us, and the bigger size means we can also push and pull large creatures around.

Guardian: The die for your Thunder Pulse increases to 1d10 Thunder damage.

Additionally, if a Huge or smaller creature ends its turn within 30 feet of you and you can see it, you can take a reaction to force them to make a Strength saving throw or be pulled up to 25 feet directly toward you. If they are pulled within 5 feet of you, you can make a melee weapon attack as part of the reaction. You can take this reaction Int times per long rest.

    Other than the damage boost (1 per hit on average) I think this is the same as the old version. Another good tanking feature the potentially pull enemies away from vulnerable allies.

Infiltrator: The damage die of your Lightning Launcher increases to 2d6 Lightning damage. A creature that takes damage from your Lighting Launcher glows with magical light until the start of your next turn, shedding dim light in a 5 foot radius and getting disadvantage on attacks against you.

Also, as a bonus action, you can gain a Fly speed equal to twice your speed until the end of the current turn. You can take this bonus action Int times per long rest.

    This is a bigger damage boost than the others. The fly speed is kind of interesting - we'll probably have a base speed of 35, meaning one turn of 70-foot flying speed. I think the best option here is to fly up to some hard-to-reach vantage point and shoot down from above.

Overall Thoughts:

Naturally, the biggest news here is the addition of the Dreadnaught, which I think actually has a pretty strong place among the options - though the fact that you'll probably need to use the enlarge feature to actually push targets around is a bit frustrating.

I think you could call this revision a buff to the old one if your interpretation is that you couldn't infuse the built-in weapons previously. We also do lose one of our two bonus infusions/replications.

Just given the Artificer's spell list, I don't think this is going to be winning any "highest damage output" awards, but I do think there's a lot of really fun utility here, and I would be excited to play this version (if only my previous Artificer had actually gotten the chance to get to level 3).