Ancient Artifact

Ancient Artifact is a buff obtained in Ashran through interacting with the Ancient Artifact object. The object appears sporadically at a variety of locations throughout the zone.

Interacting with the object will cause it to despawn, and the player to gain the buff. If the player is killed, the buff will be lost and the object will respawn, allowing it to be claimed by another player for the remaining duration.

Tips
Without doubt the single most powerful buff in Ashran.

The power granted by this buff is huge, in many ways reminiscent of multi-boxing, granting the character the power of three, and the health of two. The one downside of this is the striking visual above the character's head, serving to highlight them to all other players. The buff is very similar to a relatively advanced Orb of Power in Temple of Kotmogu, except that rather than increasing damage taken, it effectively decreases it.

Obtaining the buff takes several seconds and can be interrupted by attacks, making it tricky to pick up in the middle of a battle. If you have the buff and are about to die, run back toward your own team, and try to die well behind the front lines, where one of your faction can pick it up without getting interrupted by the opposition.

If you see opposing players gathered round the object interrupt them as quickly as possible. This is in many ways similar to preventing the opponent from capping a flag in Arathi Basin, although ideally you'll want to fight them off until you or your teammates can claim it for yourselves.

It's usually worth trying to remove enemy players with this buff as quickly as possible, before they are able to make their way through your team. However, with the buff's increased health, this is often not the easiest task. A little communication to concentrate fire on the Artifact-holder is often very useful, but consider carefully where it will drop.