Grave Dust-Cloud I think only does the healing equal to what you rolled for damage, not the total damage. That'd be fine and equivalent to most healing abilities.
The Repair Object rote works well with abilities with the Artifice keyword. They damage the little guy buffing your team, and you use Repair Object and it's back to its hp max.
Dancing Weapon has both Implement and Weapon for obvious reasons. You are casting the spell on the weapon so you -need one- (Weapon keyword)... but the weapon is not your primary weapon (Artificers are ranged weapon users) so to make it so that the weapon can be affected by your Implement bonus because you use it -every day.-
The rules crunch under it state 'Yes, you'll get the proficiency bonus for the weapon' which means if you use a Staff as Implement and Weapon for this, you'll be able to use it's proficiency bonus, otherwise it's use as an Implement would be nullified. Then, it allows you to use -either- the Implement or Weapon's stats.... which is their way of saying they don't stack. It's designed so that you don't -need- another magic weapon on top of your ranged weapon, and your implement, just for a single encounter ability.
Runic Resistance plays mindgames with the keyword inheritance rules.
Phantom Structure is awesome and unique.
As for capturing the old class... gotta remember the old class's main ability was making magic items all they wanted to -without- worrying about prerequisites or spells... and buffing the party. The former's now a ritual anyone can take, so that flavor became unnecessary, so the later is the route they had to go. So, they took that buffing objects flavor, and they went 'Buffing, that's a leader!' (which it is) and went nuts with it. Granted, they don't get the constructs-only spells, but at the same time, the new game doesn't have classes with ______-only abilities (save Turn Undead) so it's not that bad.
