Eldritch Knight is in my opinion a usefull subclass... but only if you mutliclass.
You won't be able to be very good with spells and with weapons at the same time except if you're a pact of the blade warlock or a druid with shillelagh...
The warlock Eldritch knight have 3 attacks per turn, which is what you expect from a fighter. But he also has usefull spells thanks to the warlock.
With a limited number of Eldritch knight levels, you can also have VERY powerfull spells that don't require any intelligence... Shield is the best defensive spell and that's something you can have with an eldritch knight.
Then you have magic missile eventually, but also protection from evil and good, longstrider, misty step,... and a few others.
Eldritch Knight 7 Warlock 5 is good and gives you 3 feats. With a few items is is a good build that only need charisma and constitution.
Sames goes for the druid and shilellagh that only need wisdom and constitution.
Currently building a spore druid 7 eldritch knight 5 and it mostly works as well as other martial multiclass.
With a good staff without anything in the offhand you can grabd great weapon master and do massive damage. With a few items your attacks are close or even better than 2H weapon damages.
But you are a druid so you can also cast a few spells. With fighter levels you are proficient in constitution ST, you wear a heavy armor, and you have the shield spell which makes you extremely hard to hit for ennemies.
You can also eventually wildshape... ofc wildshape sucks a lot in the release version tbh.
But I agree that a full Eldritch knight is really dissapointing because on top of NOT having a lot of (high level) spells... You are bad at using them.
That said being able to use weapons with intelligence may be too powerfull.
I always Eldritch Knight Lae-zel, as I see it as the "Githyanki Way".
She uses two spells - Magic Missile to assuredly kill enemies on 2-6 HP, and the flamethrower i.e. Flaming Hands. No need for INT.
Well... INT define the difficulty check of the spell... So the lower is your intelligence, the higher is the chance your ennemies suced their saving throw...
