True.
But that's the same for any other Gish (Valor bard, Eldritch Knight, Bladesinger, ect...).
Except you know you will have access to wand of the war mage.
While the bonus is limited to an item type, it's no longer limited by rarity.
And in my experience, parties where mostly full of...
I doubt most players change more than an item per day anyways. Plus the transmute for a 3rd change.
It does feel a bit limited with the level 20 feature. If you sacrifice all your items, it takes several days to rebuild them.
A few Ideas.
1: Full Slots, expend spell slots for infusions but don't recover them as long as the item exists. I.e. a +1 Armor cost a level 2 slot indefinitely.
Cast Hypnotic Pattern and Meteor Swarm if you still have the slots for them.
2: No slots. Get infusion points, and you can use...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Transmute doesn't seem to have the "one copy" limit, or time limit.
So given days before we enter the volcano, could I give the whole party armor of fire resistance?
Or hand out 4 wands of magic missile to commoners defending the town?
Then what do you see as the big difference?
Or did you want more than a few tweaks?
They are getting access to many more things.
Wand of Viscid Glob is not a spell they could normally cast, and now can.
Or is the main complaint that other people can get boots of the winding path now?
I...
I don't know why you think paper lacks creative uses and narrative potential...
But if your party has infinite money, time, and on-demand access to any shop item, then yes. This would be a redundant.
But I'll be creativly using my summoned rope to hold something up, walk away, then going to...
This part was messed up in the UA and needed fixed. Definitely should be able to make your Armorer weapon magical.
I give it a 70% chance it was fixed, but I'll haven't seen it yet.