I personally like artifacts for legitimate reasons. I don't use them often, not with Nilfgaard. I used Thunderbolt alot with Northern Realms. I think it was 3 updates ago, they did fix some artifacts (mostly damage ones).
Out of curiosity, why and what legitimate reasons?
In regards to your fix statement, please clarify. From where I am sitting Sihil was adjusted and stopped seeing play. Spears and Shields were adjusted to reduce their effectiveness and it ended up making them stronger. Then they were adjusted again and stopped seeing play. Now these cards just sit there in the deck builder. The art and resources placed into creating them all for what? This is not an example of quality adjustments. It's amateur hour.
As I see it, potions and such belong in the game, and artifact is a good way to implement that. And I never had any issues with artifacts when opponents play those for in a legitimate way. Besides artifacts isn't the biggest problem with special cards decks, variants of scorch is. Now there is what, 7 for monsters, 5 for the others? Why did they add that cheaper scorch card in the first place with Crimson Curse? And that bronze situational scorch for monsters (predatory dive) does not exactly help against special cards decks.
It's a non-interactive, binary way to implement it. You want to boost a unit, great. Here, put this card on the board and, whenever you're ready, boost a unit. Oh, and by the way, only a single other card type can deal with it. One which weakens a deck against anything but this type of card.
The point of my earlier post was much of the viability of these special/artifact spam decks is because these non-interactive concepts enhance what they're ultimately trying to do to win a game. The more limited or non-interactive concepts you have the easier it is to build a viable non-interactive deck. Immunity, boost/damage artifacts on orders, Summoning Circle, leader abilities, etc. All of this stuff opens up more possibilities for achieving #2 and #3 in my earlier post. And all of it tends to be #1.
In regards to Scorch and all of it's derivatives.... Those cards are limited by the points on the board. They can only remove what is placed on the board. Furthermore, they don't provide positive value. You can do #2 in my earlier post extremely effectively with these cards, sure. You cannot do #3. At some point a deck spamming these cards will run out of them and be forced to play positive value. That point is the more important aspect of these type of decks. It's what ultimately allows them to take rounds. If you wish to block this style of play it stands to reason weakening the win cons, or the ways a player can achieve or amplify them, would be more effective.
With that said, yes, they have probably gone overboard with these Scorch concepts. Once upon a time Scorch was a relatively unique card. It's an example of a concept where there should be somewhat strict limits on the availability of the concept. Otherwise it can get out of hand. Unfortunately, this doesn't fit with, "Add a lot of new cards, any cards, we have a deadline to meet you filthy plebs.".
Also, personally I like that a few units can have immune, I almost never use it myself, and those units are not overpowered, especially now that they fixed Saesenthessis. But I think it's bad that they can manually be targeted while on hand, and this is also problematic in relation to the special cards deck. What's your thought on immune in this regard?
The issue with Immune is the same issue with Promote. In case you're unaware, a loooong time ago gold cards were effectively "immune". There was a mechanic called Promote. Promote would "promote" a card to gold. There was a thing called Henselt Promote where you would put down cards with various abilities then Promote them to gold, barring the opponent from dealing with them. This mechanic was just asking for unintended consequences. And, that is exactly what happened. Dump cards on a board with decent damage over time abilities then Promote them. Congratulations opponent, get the hell out of
my round.
Same idea with Immune. Card A might be okay just the way it is designed. Until you have a way to make it immune. An immune card might be fine on it's own until you have a way to interact with and make it stronger. Meanwhile the opponent cannot do anything to it unless they happen to be running and draw very specific cards. To provide examples, Vysogota and Saes. Do you know what happens when Vysogota gets put on a board early in a long round and given immune? Yeah, it's almost always winning the round without a very specific answer. For the same reason the Promote example above had this result.
It's not about whether it's OP right now. It's the fact it has the potential to create real problems. Of equal importance, non-interactive mechanics are not well received (case and point, artifacts and... this thread). They don't fit "strategic card game".
If they need a way to give certain cards protection as a balancing/tuning dial something like armor is a much better idea. It's not all or nothing. Nor is it non-interactive. You can hit a card with armor. It's just harder to remove it. The person playing a card with armor has time to respond to attempts to kill it. There are all sorts of ways to adjust cards with armor, beyond provision or power adjustments. It begs the question of why the hell they even ditched the concept in the first place.