When I initially looked over the revision to the Artificer, I felt bummed out by some of the lost features - most importantly the amazing level 20 capstone's now-lost boost to saving throws.
However, the more I think about it, the more I have come to realize something:
Artificers are the "inventor" class. And you need to be inventive with it. And if you are, you can pull of some insane shenanigans.
DMs: if your natural instinct is to rein in fiddly rules-based shenanigans, make an exception here. This is the class that is built around "clever hacks," and it will honestly lose out a lot on its power if you don't let them pull of things that seem to bend the rules but don't, actually. The fantasy of this class is to find the clever methods, exploits, and interactions that a real-life engineer would. So try to be accommodating (within reason).
My intent in this post is not to give you an exhaustive list of all the ways that you can game the Artificer's features, but instead to bring up broad categories or avenues for clever tricks.
Your Homunculus:
Homunculus Servant, which used to be an infusion, is now a 2nd level spell. It can be cast as a ritual and has a 100gp spell component, though this component is not consumed by the spell, so you can buy it once and just keep it around.
The Homunculus isn't terribly powerful in a vacuum, but it has a big benefit: you don't need to use any action to command it in a fight.
Every Artificer should have one of these. There's no reason not to. Basically, it should be expected that a 5+ level Artificer has one of these if it hasn't been killed in combat or some other catastrophe. (While your spell preparations are limited, I might keep this one prepared if you can spare it just so you can always get it back after a 61-minute ritual).
Now, the Homunculus has a little dinky attack that does... a little bit of damage. But we can do more.
Notably, the Homunculus is a conveniently flying creature that could potentially wield magic items. If you put a powerful spell (like a Battle Smith's Conjure Barrage) in a Spell-Storing Item, you could have the Homunculus use the item to cast the spell while freeing up your action to do other things. We can also cast spells like Dragon's Breath on it, weaponizing its action.
I will say that this isn't technically all that different from a Familiar (in many ways, this is the Artificer's equivalent) but I do think that the somewhat less explicitly beast-like form means that it's plausible for them to carry at least very small items and use them.
Magic Item Tinker:
There are several ways to make ample use of this feature.
Being able to charge up a magic item with spell slots can be quite good: items that cast spells that are higher than 1st level will let you basically up-cycle your low-level spell slots in favor of them. Perhaps the most dramatic is if you make a Helm of Teleportation, which will effectively give you Teleport as a 1st level spell. This is limited, though, because you can only use it on replicated magic items. But other items, like Winged Boots (which now works on a charge system) has four charges and gives you an hour of flight per charge. While not as fast as the actual Fly spell, a 3rd level spell slot effectively gives you 3 extra hours of flight with them. By level 9, when you have 2 3rd level, 3 2nd level, and 4 1st level spells, on top of the four base charges, you could spend 20 hours flying with your boots (if you were willing to expend all your spell slots).
Now, both the Drain and Transmute magic item options are also quite powerful if you use the following strategies:
Get an item with a powerful one-use effect, or an item that has charges. Once all those uses or charges are expended (and if you don't want to spend spell slots to recharge it) you can then dispose of the old item for another one. For example, a Spell Refueling Ring will give you back up to a 3rd level spell slot. It recharges at dawn, but why wait for that? You can always just create another one tomorrow, so drain it or transmute it to get, respectively, another spell slot or some other useful item.
Indeed, a lot of magic items won't necessarily regenerate all of their charges every day. Thus, it's a better call to just use up all of its charges (or as many as you think you'll need) and then drain it.
All Kinds of Spell-Storing Item Stuff:
While the feature isn't all that different than it was in the previous version, the fact that it can cast 3rd level spells is a pretty big deal. The best use, I think, is if you can put a powerful spell in it and then hand it to a character who doesn't generally do such powerful things. If this can be your Homunculus, that's great. But you could hand it to a friendly NPC who is following your party, or you can just hand it to a fellow party member who might not have quite the best tools for a given situation - like a Rogue when you're facing 20 minor monsters.
Three of the subclasses have very strong 3rd level AoE damage spells that you can put in this - Battle Smiths get Conjure Barrage, Artillerists get Fireball, and Armorers get Lightning Bolt. But while there aren't quite as obvious choice for the Alchemist or Cartographer, you can get some utility out of Fly, letting each party member cast it on themselves and worry about concentration separately.
There are probably lots of clever uses for these avenues of shenanigans, and I'll be curious to see as the online community comes up with more. Also, as new books come out, we will see new wondrous items that might inspire new tricks.
Again, I think if you aren't using these tricks, the class might feel a little underpowered, so even if you're not generally the kind of player who looks for this sort of rules chicanery, I do think that that's the intent behind the Artificer.
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