Artificers: Sucky?

[Kinneus]

I'm playing a dwarven artificer starting tomorrow, and you guys have been great so far in helping me hammer out questions about the build and whatnot. Now, I bring before you a more open-ended question: do artificers suck?
I'm in love with the flavor of the class. And I personally believe that a less-than-optimized party Leader just makes the game more 'exciting' for everybody, so I'm fine with playing him even if he won't be a minmaxed lord of destruction. But I can't quite shake the feeling that they're a really subpar class.
The powers are all over the place. Some seem really cool, like Magic Weapon and many of the Dailies. But most of them seem distinctly 'Controller'-y, while these guys are a supposed to be Leaders, right?
And my biggest issue of all is Healing Infusion. It's the worst healing power in the game, hands-down. "You can create healing infusions for later use. At the end of an extended rest, you create two healing infusions until the end of your next extended rest. At 16th level, you instead create three healing infusions. You determine the effect of a healing infusion at the time you use the power, not at the time you create it. When you use a Healing Infusion power, you expend one of the infusions you created during your last extended rest. During a short rest, you or an ally can spend a healing surge to replenish one of the infusions expended."
The bolded part is the bit I'm concerned about. The amount that Curative Admixture heals isn't all that impressive... but to require players to give up healing surges to re-use the ability? It's like the designers said, "Hey, let's make this Leader class's healing skill worse than a Cleric's in every single measurable way possible, and then add an extra cost to using it!" I mean... why?
You think they'd at least give Artificers a few extra surges to compensate, but no. Six. A measly six! Clerics get seven!
Seriously, it's so needlessly crippling that I'm planning to conveniently 'forget' that last sentence of the class feature when we play tomorrow. Can anyone think of a reason why this power is designed this way?
General reflections on the artificer class itself would be appreciated, too, as well as suggestions for building a halfway decent one that won't doom his party by occupying the Leader slot.

 

[Vendark]

Did you fail to notice that, unlike other leaders' healing powers, Healing Infusions don't require the target to spend a surge?

Instead of forcing the person who needs the healing to use the surge, Infusions allow party members with excess surges to recharge the artificer's healing ability, effectively donating their surges to the party. It's a pretty significant advantage.

 

[im_robertb]

The advantage of the Healing Infusion powers is that they let the target heal as if they had spent a healing surge, rather than actually making them spend one. So:

1) You wake up in the morning. Your two Healing Infusion 'bottles' are full.
2) During a fight, you use HI twice, emptying both bottles, giving your party 2 HSes worth of healing.
3) After the fight, you get 2 HSes from anyone in the party so that you can use them again in the next fight.
4) Repeat steps 2&3 until your next extended rest.

Not only are you effectively adding 2 free HSes to the party each day, but you are also able to shift HSes around the party a bit. Defender's been taking heavy beatings every fight, and is now out of surges? That's okay, the Controller hasn't been touched yet. When you do decide to take an extended rest, it's more likely that everyone will be running out of surges rather than just one, meaning you can probably do more encounters each day. There's a paragon-tier feat in EPG that effectively doubles your healing through one of these powers, which I think is actually quite ridiculously powerful.

I'd caution you to keep in mind, if you picked any Summoning powers, that upon the creature's death, you lose a healing surge. It's generally worth it, though, since the creature has to take more damage than that to die, and if it survives the fight, it's like getting more damage soaking ability for cheap.

Also be aware that your powers may depend on an implement, a ranged weapon, or a melee weapon. If you go all across the board, it's very hard to keep all three (or just two: implement + melee/thrown weapon) magic items up to par.

 

[Kinneus]

Did you fail to notice that, unlike other leaders' healing powers, Healing Infusions don't require the target to spend a surge?

I actually did. You're right! That is a significant advantage. Yeesh.

 

[Kinneus]

Also be aware that your powers may depend on an implement, a ranged weapon, or a melee weapon. If you go all across the board, it's very hard to keep all three (or just two: implement + melee/thrown weapon) magic items up to par.

Yes, I noticed that problem early on. I tried to see if I could weasel my way into using a throwing hammer as an implement in this thread:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-rules/270970-can-ranged-weapon-implement.html
In the end, I've decided to only take Weapon powers, and avoid Implement powers whenever possible.
The artificers have it even worse than the standard divine characters, though, who need to split their feats and equipment between implements and weapons. They have melee, ranged, and implement powers, as you pointed out, and they also have a few in there, like Dancing Weapon and Animate Arbalester, that requires them to have an extra weapon to enchant. I can just imagine some poor artificer dragging along a +2 fullblade, a +3 dagger, a +3 wand, and two +3 crossbows, just so he can use all his powers if he has to. The easy fix, of couse, is to avoid powers like Dancing Weapon and Animate Arbalester, I guess.

 

[Vael]

There are ways around dealing with multiple weapons/implements. The feat "Arcane Implement Proficiency" can add either heavy or light blades as implements, Daggers and Drow Long Knives are throwable weapons, so you can use a single weapon. The "Farbond Spellblade" enchantment can make any heavy or light blade throwable.

Another feat from Dragon allows you to use crossbows as implements.

 

[Destil]

You think they'd at least give Artificers a few extra surges to compensate, but no. Six. A measly six! Clerics get seven!

It's actually mentioned in the design notes for the class at one point that the artificer was docked a surge from their per-day count to make up for the class getting, in effect, 2 for free every day.

Con is also a possible sub-stat for the class.

 

[Eric888]

Artficers are fantastic, due in large part to how good their at-wills are. Magic Weapon, especially with Battle Engineer, but even without, is very powerful. Giving large bonuses both to hit and damage to everyone next to you, with no restriction on times per turn, or who the attacks are made against, is pretty insane.

Also their dailies, particularly the sigils, are nothing to sneeze at either. They are a tricky class because among all the great powers are a large some of lame ones that take an experienced player to avoid. And although it is quite easy to go all-implement or all-weapon, cutting your powers by half is severe so they suffer from the 'needs both a weapon and an implement and feats for both' paradign that plagues paladins and bards. But all and all, if built right, the class is extremely formidable.

 

[Jhaelen]

Actually, I think artificers are great. I'm just not interested in helping people optimize builds, though.

 

[Klaus]

I actually did. You're right! That is a significant advantage. Yeesh.

And do note that *anyone* can spend surges to replenish the infusions. So your defenders are running low on surges, while your archer ranger is pristine? Well, the archer can now pitch in with a surge or two to replenish the infusions, essentially "healing" the denfeder.