Both. I'm not super familiar with it because by the time they got around to releasing an artificer I was already waning in my 5e interest, so I'm going largely on memory of early drafts (Unearthed Arcanas) and general cultural osmosis.
Different subclasses or builds have different focuses. There's an alchemist subclass, a gunner subclass (like 2e's gunslinger), and one more like the inventor.