[Atlas Post Melee 3.0]

Let me start this post by saying this: I love Melee 3.0. It's some of the most fun I've had with Warframe in a long time. The changes to weapons and the build diversity it's caused has been so much fun to play around with. Scythes are usable weapons!
 

However, some things have been extremely negatively affected by Melee 3.0, and I'd like to talk about one of them here, something very close to my heart, as it involves my favorite Warframe in the game, Atlas. 

 

To say that Atlas feels forgotten would be quite the understatement. I think the most Atlas has ever been talked about by the community as a whole was A, when he was first released, and B, when his Deluxe Skin, Sir Rock Hard Cheeks, was teased and finally released. I think that's largely due to the big titan's extremely clunky playstyle. It's understandable, honestly, it really is. Why would most people want to have to spam 1 to kill things with rather slow dashes to them and finicky, short range targeting instead of just cruising by with their 5+ meter range weapon and cleave a whole crowd down? For me, it's the satisfaction. I love seeing enemies get crushed to bits behind the power of my punches. I remember the first time I ever saw a number above 1 million damage. It belonged to my man Atlas as I showed an Elite crewman what the true meaning of pain was. 

 

All the memories aside, let's get down to the meat and potatoes of this post, the changes to Atlas following Melee 3.0. Someone might say "What  do you mean, 'changes to Atlas? Nothing happened to him.'" That's where you would be wrong. Atlas's damage was wholly dependent on his melee weapon, and the interaction between his own built in combo window and scaling from the melee combo counter. That was why the Venka prime was actually the best melee weapon on him, as you could sacrifice its damage and buff your 1 with the power of its enhanced combo scaling. The Venka prime doesn't have advanced combo scaling anymore. All the Venka prime can do is reach a x13 multiplier instead of a x12, and it doesn't even reach it faster, which would make it still good. Instead you have to get a 240 hit combo in order to even realize that you're using the Venka Prime and not the normal Venka. That's not the only thing that affected Atlas, however. Alongside this update, the combo counter was made to no longer buff the damage of light attacks, and only affected heavy attacks by way of damage. This causes a problem for all the warframes that had abilities that scaled off of the melee combo counter, namely Khora with her Whipclaw Augment, Atlas's 1, and Valkyr's 4. The combo scaling wasn't totally taken away from those abilities, however. Instead they recieve a 25% damage increase with each tick up the combo multiplier, up to a maximum of 3.25x or 325% damage. Doing some math, it becomes apparent that this doesn't actually lead to a large difference in effective damage output for these weapons from pre Melee 3.0. There is one huge change, however. With the change to the combo counter scaling, most weapons were gifted with the ability to take their crit scaling through the roof, and almost every melee weapon in the game right now has the ability to get consistent orange crits, including Valkyr's 4 and Khora's Whipclaw. Atlas, however, doesn't have the luxury, as his 1 is still stuck at 5% base crit AND status. It was fine before, as the raw damage between the venka prime's combo scaling (or the 90% extra toxin damage on hit from the mire) would allow you to keep up with other weapons purely due to your raw damage output, but that is not the case anymore. Atlas's 1 is just plainly worse than any of the other options available right now, and the rest of his kit is laughably underpowered compared even to his 1. His 2 is downright useless in 90% of situations, his 4 is a pair of idiots that just serve as temporary bullets sponges, his passive armor gain does nothing without enemies dying from his 1, and his 3 just serves as a stun. Atlas needs changes, at the very least some form of buff to his 1, if not a full kit rework. I, personally, very much support going a sort of hybrid between Garuda and Exalted weapons, giving Atlas an integrated melee weapon, should you not have one equipped, and being able to mod that weapon to directly support his 1, thereby actually allowing the players to see the stats they would be working with. Please, don't let Atlas fall into the void of being forgotten.

[Is Excalibur really as bad as You Tube seems to make the frame out to be?]

Excal is honestly one of the best frames in the game. While not really exceeding in any one particular category, Excal has passable survivability, fantastic damage, good cc, and decent mobility. Like I said, he's not winning and catagory medals, but as an all-around frame, you can't really go wrong with Excal.

[Connection problem? I can now log in. Japan]

So, to summarize. Everything is #*($%%@.

[Infested Meteor and Operation: Plague Star]

So what is this about a "Meteorite on impact trajectory with Earth?" Also Lotus says that it is "Alive?" What is that about? Anyone got any insight?