The equip ability on its own, without outside help from cards like Leonin Shikari, cannot be activated at instant speed, so if you play an Artificers Hex on an equipment thats already attached to a creature, they will not be able to remove that equipment before they are in their main phase, guaranteeing you a dead creature
If the target is legal but not dealt damage (most likely because of a prevention effect), it can't block this turn
Plus, the ability to discard your hand and draw four cards is a lot of card advantage, so youll often cast a lot of spells, get empty-handed, and just refill by drawing four cards
Graded Population Report: Shining Rayquaza #56 Visualize the distrbution of grades in the chart
As such you can fairly reliably chunk planeswalkers for two in the mid game with a Predator which stops them from being cast or at least stops them doing much useful