The only 5e PHB guidance to follow as to how to model a class that's both not a martial (a martial gains Extra Attack at 5th) and not a full caster is the rogue, and I don't think the rogue damage track is the right path to follow. Making the artificer a half-caster has the advantage of simplicity. Making the artificer a noncaster requires an entire new resource model, so I'm not surprised they didn't go in that direction; 5e mechanical design has certainly tended to be conservative from the official channels. As always, I'm glad I've weaned myself off official material for my own table needs.
IMO it's a very good thing that they are reluctant to introduce entirely new resource models into the game. I think one of the primary and irreplaceable strengths of the edition is that the game doesn't function completely differently for people with all the material vs people with just the PHB.
That said, the damage track of the rogue could be exactly what an Inventor class would benefit from. Not the Artificer, because that's an explicitly magical crafter with a specific vision, but a different Inventor class, certainly. If they are somehow able to infuse magic into things while simultaneously unable to do any magic directly (imo a silly premise), why not allow a similar damage track as a psuedo-smite that is at-will because it isn't coming from without, but from their "signature weapon"?
Maybe less restricted than the rogue, but also less damage. So, you can add it to the damage of the firebolt you shoot out of your Signature Wand or whatever, but you deal half the extra damage of a rogue, or something like half the dice but d8s instead of d6s, or whatever makes the math work.
I'd also give such a class, maybe called the Imbuer, the ability to recharge magic items with charges x/day, with a level based table for what rarity of item they can recharge, and how many x it takes to recharge items of a given rarity. Using spell slots to do it would be more mechanically efficient, I'd wager, but since the goal is to not have those...
Then I'd have a few different types of Signature Creation you can have, analogous to the Warlocks Pact Boon choice in that it's aside from the subclass choice. Subclasses would include things like gaining the ability to make a weapon attack as a Bonus Action after using a magic item as an Action, 1/3 spellcasting, a mech suit, advanced bomb and/or trap crafting, etc. I've despised every "mutagen" chugging class I've ever seen in a d20 game, but might as well let those guys have their thing, too.
Just, leave the Artificer itself out of it. They're two separate concepts.
But in the end, folks that don't like this Artificer are best off looking to 3pp, for better or worse.
The survey is no longer accepting additional responses?
But we only got one week of play testing the new material!
Yeah, I think they basically just ran the numbers on the satisfaction portion, saw overwhelmingly positive responses, and realised that any further work would just be fine tuning. And they probably got more than sufficient (in their view) responses in that time. Still, I wish it was open for longer, or that they'd waiting longer to put it out. I know a couple ppl in my group didn't get a chance to sit down and go through it properly enough to give good feedback.
