Currently In a campaign(Tomb of Annihilation) I am in, I am playing a yuan-ti Artificer(battle smith). One dilemma I faced when planning out my character is the feat options or ability score improvement, I am not too worried about my stats because I have a 9 in strength, a 18 in con, 15 in charisma, a 15 in wisdom, and a 18 in intelligence due to very lucky rolls(racial modifiers already included). I have not settled on the war caster feat or another feat.

War caster feat because, well my character is a battle smith and uses intelligence for his attacks with a weapon, while using Arcane weapon, an artificer spell which adds a +1d6 of a certain damage type to my weapon attack. I feel either my character will use a Warhammer and a shield, or just a Warhammer so he can use somatic components and take advantage of it's versatile property, avoiding this feat altogether.

even though I feel like the shield is a little excessive, I still think a shield adds a pretty good AC bonus. advantage on concentration is pretty good though(and opportunity attacks with spells), even when I am a half caster, Please tell me if I should ditch the shield and not take war caster(or not) and if so please tell me what feat(or ability score increase) I should take instead.

Thanks.

I think you should choose warcaster if the spell of opportunity and advantage on concentration appeal to you. If you are still just going to smack them with your warhammer, then you probably don't need it.

You can also use an infused item as a spellcasting focus, so if you infuse the shield or hammer (or even armor), that will reduce some of the issue of having hands full.

Ok cool thanks, I forgot you could do that, that is better than taking the feat

Artificer - Crossbow Expert, Repeating Hand Crossbow, Acane Weapon (later Sharpshooter) - a great combo. :)

@Mergon Which subclass would you go for that build?

The Articier I built along those lines went with Artillerist, but I made him before the Arcivist or Battle Smith. Now I would go Battle Smith.