Atlas Is Really Good Now- Except For His Rumblers

[(PSN)deathfrombelow5]

With the recent changes, Atlas has become a pretty decent frame. His first ability is pretty powerful, His second ability has some useful cover utility, and his third ability is decent crowd control if used while a buddy takes out the crowd.

 

His Rumblers, unfortunatley, are not very good. The problems with them are numerous, but come down to some very basic issues.

 

Problem Number 1: Rumblers don't do enough-

The first problem with the rumblers are pretty basic. When I can just clear out a room with Landslide (BTW landslide is fine, no nerf needed), there is absolutely no reason to waste the energy on the shaky ai of the underpowered rumblers. Fixing it is pretty simple. Instead of the weak punch that the rumblers do, give them an earthquake slam that can do some serious damage to groups. If you have to limit the number of projectles that the rumblers can shoot to balance this change, so be it.

 

Problem Number 2: Rumblers Don't add to the group, or to the player-

Nekros' shadows of the dead allows the player to give the group some cover, and can draw aggro away. In addition, with the augment mod, it gives nekros some good damage redouction. Rumblers, on the other hand, do neither of these. There are two possible fixes that might make this ability a bit better:

 

Complicated Fix: Pressing 4 a second time while rumblers are up causes them to go to where the player is aiming, and form into two Tectonic walls, linked together. These walls can link with the actual tectonic wall. This will give the Rumblers some protection utility, and give them more usability as a whole. I expect this to not be easy to implement, however, and might be better suited to an augment mod.

 

Simple fix: When friendlies are in a 5/10/15 m radius of the rumblers, they gain 100/200/300 extra shields,  75/150/225 (Might be a bit high) armor, and 3/5/7 percent health regen per sec. This will add team utility to rumblers, and value to atlas as a whole.

Edited October 12, 2015 by (PS4)deathfrombelow5

[Vargras]

Rumblers, unfortunatley, are not very good.

Annnd you lost me.

[Wawazat]

number of rumblers spawned increase with power strength. (2/2/2/2 being the max at 100% power strength so strength based builds can max 5(?) freaking huge things) 

[Ceryk]

Annnd you lost me.

Ditto.

 

The Rumbles are the single best pet skill in the game as an actual pet skill. Nekros' Shadows is first and foremost a defensive ability meant to flood the room with targets to give Nekros cover because he is squishy. Nyx's Mind Control is utterly useless because the target's AI is so inefficient that it spends half the duration sitting around starting at walls and 3/4ths of the remaining slowly attempting to move towards the player rather than seeking enemies out to attack.

The Rumblers actually attack enemies non-stop while doing a very substantial amount of damage and are enough of a distraction to draw the attention of enemies to buy you time to do things like hit life support or get players up under less fire. Atlas is a heavily armored frame, he doesn't need as big of a distraction as Nekros does. And quite frankly, if you really need a breather, you should probably use Petrify or Tectonics. Rumblers are primarily for offense and they do a damn good job at that.

As far as comparing your ability to clear the room with Landslide with Rumblers... so what? You're also spending more energy doing that instead of a set amount on 2 pets that attack non-stop for a much longer duration. That's like comparing a sprinter and a long distance marathon runner. They are two entirely different types of running for entirely different situations.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Ceryk