There are currently 19 distinct Minor Artifact types in the drop pool, each with at least one non-resistance stat that visibly changes as you upgrade it. Two are especially clear examples if you want an easy before/after comparison:

• HeartOfTheLion / VioletCourage — Luck 48 at Dormant power versus Luck 95 at Ascended power. A plain number on the tooltip, easy to compare side by side.
• ArcticDeathDealer — Weapon Damage Increase 20% at Dormant versus 40% at Ascended.

If you drop an artifact whose standout properties happen to be resistances, don’t be surprised that upgrading it looks like it “did nothing” visually — resistances never scale on any Minor Artifact, by design (see Initial Quality & Upgrade Potential). That’s expected behavior, not a bug; look at the item’s non-resistance stats instead.

Reading an artifact’s name

Every Minor Artifact’s in-game name encodes its current tier and upgrade step directly, for example:

Blaze of Death (Dormant 2/5)

As you spend Ichor on it, the step count climbs; crossing a tier boundary swaps the word in parentheses (Dormant → Awakened → Ascended) and the name updates immediately — no relog needed.