I would go as far as to say Artificer is a below-average 5-cost.
I've ignored it like 3/4 times I've played with it and it wasn't spectacular the time I did get it.
So what you're saying here is that you've played with Artificer a single time. That you ignored Artificer four other times isn't evidence that the card is bad, it's evidence that you thought the card was bad. You really don't have much of any experience with Artificer at all.
I'm pointing this out, because Artificer really is one of those cards you have to just buy a few times to "get it". It's not a card whose value is super obvious from looking at it, but if you just buy it once or twice more you'll understand. I've played probably 30 games with Artificer in it, and for the longest time I thought it was mediocre and kept skipping it, but when I finally did start buying it, it was very good!
Best case I can think of would be comboing up a few Artificers with a few Scrying Pools and a very action-rich deck. Use a SP to fill up your hand, play Artificer, discard 8 cards for a Province, play another SP, rinse, repeat, to gain multiple Provinces in a turn without the need for +buy or cost reduction. Sure, the Province gets topdecked, but the next SP discards it for you.
Artificer / Scrying Pool is a super strong combo, and the only reason I didn't mention it in the OP is that I didn't want to give it away
. Once a Scrying Pool deck takes off, you often end up with extra Scrying Pool anyway, so overdrawing isn't a big concern, and you can basically gain one Province per Artificer. Plus if your deck misfires, you can basically always topdeck an Artificer for next turn.
Also I find you example very, very misleading. What if you have Smithy-Artificier in hand? Then your hand won't become great. If the Artificier in your hand was a Smithy (which it could have been), the hand would've been better.
Did you mean to say something else? If the Artificer was another Smithy, you have fewer options. I may be misunderstanding your example.
Not necessarily, you have a 7card hand instead of a 3card hand + a new smithy. I meant exactly what I said: Artificier makes your starting hand only better in this specific situation where you need a specifc card (draw), and artificier could have been draw instead. Artificier is not versatile in making your starting hand better.
...or in that specific case, you can just not gain anything from Artificer, and then you have a seven card hand, $1 more money than you otherwise would have, and you've cycled 1 more card through your deck. The discard for benefit is completely optional, so it is definitely better than having two Smithy in that hand. In any case, you're playing Artificer wrong here - because of this reason, it is better to slightly overbuy Villages in an Artificer game so you can gain draw cards rather than the other way around. If you ended up with Smithy / Artificer / dud x3, you had some bad luck or your terminal density is too high. Not to mention, Smithy / Artificer / literally any cantrip at all would let you topdeck a village, draw it, and play it. This doesn't need to be a common scenario.