My clan was talking and we came across an idea that we thought was a great addition to the game.

What if we could rank up artifacts like we do champions.

There are so many great artifacts that that are a low rank but players use them because they know that the odds of getting a higher ranked artifact with the same stats is impossible. 

So what if after we get them to +16 we could rank them up and then the go back to +0 and we have to upgrade them again.

It would use the exact same mechanics of when we rank up a champion but with some slight differences.

The artifacts would have to be +16 and would go back to +0 after the rank up, if we wanted to rank up a 4s artifact it would require 4 more rank 4 artifacts to do it, but this is where the slight difference between champions and artifacts come in, you would need to use the same type and group of artifacts. Meaning that if you wanted to upgrade a 4s life steal gloves to 5s, you would need to use life steal gloves only to rank up the gloves you wanted.

Doing this would not take away from the grind of getting artifacts, it would actually increase it in a way.  Because they would need the silver and artifacts to do it.