Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
Rating Wizard/Artificer gold but Wizard/Cleric as merely sky blue seems overblown. Artificer 1 gives you medium armor and shields, but Artificer is less front-loaded than Cleric is: most of the good Artificer stuff only comes online at level 2+, and if you're going to dip two levels you are going to be tempted to go for Wizard/Fighter instead. The best thing about Wizard/Artificer, as Merduo pointed out in another thread, is INT-based Sanctuary, but overall I think it just deserves to be sky-blue in an overall tie with Fighter and Cleric.
Fair point. I think I may have over-valued the gish SADness. I'm wary of SADness due to the strength of hexblade dips. At least Artificer requires 3 levels for that. My first inclination is to try an Abjurer x/Artificer 3, using BB. Compared to the fighter dip, it's as much about gishing vs just survivability. You lose that heavy armor (and action surge potential) but gain Int to attacks, and still only lose 1 level of slots. (Yay round up!)

Overall the artificer seems like a strong utility dip that can slightly or significantly vary in power depending on the prevalence of magic items in your game. It's one of those weird classes that doesn't directly synergize with a ton of things, but can really shore up weaknesses and be slapped onto anything. A big appeal is the regular bonus action usage potential for classes that don't have that don't have a busy bonus action.