Atlas Rework with Suggestions

[-CM-Machete]

Very coherent and well thought suggestions, I loved many ideas and the way you put them, specially the first line about the golems having no presence and how the wall and turning it into a boulder has no impact whatsoever.

I would add, making the golems by default to draw agro just like Loki's decoy or Saryn's .... toxic decoy (:D).

I personally hate petrify above anything else, I hate skills that imply self-crippling, it's too expensive and time consuming for what does, if it made the enemies take finisher damage from regular melee, for example, it would have some use to petrify them and then smash them with your 1 or with a weapon. Making them get 1-shot by attacks from your 1 while they are petrify would also be nice.

[MuscleBeach]

32 minutes ago, -CM-Machete said:

I would add, making the golems by default to draw agro just like Loki's decoy or Saryn's .... toxic decoy (:D).

Just in case it's not known, the Titanic Rumbler augment mod does make the Titan rumbler aggro the enemies. I'll be honest, I do need to test it to see how effective it is. But running 4 defensive mods (Quick Thinking setup) and now having to add this augment mod, I don't really have much space left for build variety. Even if it does work, in my eyes there will be 5 mandatory mods, 1 Aura mod, 1 Exilus Mod, 3 Anything mods for a Rumbler that will probably get slaughtered because the 5 mandatory mods don't boost the Titan at all, except for Vitality, and the Titan has less health than 2 smaller Rumblers. So it's not looking good even if it does aggro properly. 

53 minutes ago, -CM-Machete said:

I personally hate petrify above anything else, I hate skills that imply self-crippling, it's too expensive and time consuming for what does, if it made the enemies take finisher damage from regular melee, for example, it would have some use to petrify them and then smash them with your 1 or with a weapon. Making them get 1-shot by attacks from your 1 while they are petrify would also be nice.

Yeah, I agree that Petrify is the worst. Though, your changes could be included and I still wouldn't use Petrify as punches already 1-3 shot most things at sortie levels. I'm of the belief that a CC skill on him needs to be applied in a more passive way (like my aura suggestion) or just not be on him. I'm accepting the fact that he will most probably always have a dead skill on him but I'm going to still churn out more ideas: 

What if Petrified targets shatter and die when they take 75% of their max health while Petrified, affected by Power Strength? It's like a different version of viral and still thematic. It would even be worse than Viral unless you hit 200% power strength but can be used in conjunction with it. It wouldn't really have a use outside of hours long endurance runs but at least it would now have a use where taking yourself out of combat to cast it would feel beneficial. 

[-CM-Machete]

37 minutes ago, MuscleBeach said:

Just in case it's not known...

I really think the augment there is useless and gimicky, just like Zephyr's Tornadoes: "hey we are going to make the grandpa Tornadoes move faster, but now they won't do the only thing they are good for" and I'm like:  https://image.prntscr.com/image/MqyNUFHVTZaUxRUZ1Ny-4Q.png

The agro it draws is just irrelevant another "dreamland" design idea from DE that only works in theory, enemies still prioritize the closest target so it doesn't work that much as actual agro.

They don't really kill much, and you can't use them as DR like Nekros' minions. About Petrify, I would pretty much pick them being one-shot by Landslide, or make it so petrify removes armor calculations while they are petrified while being hit by Landslide. There would be really no argument because it's a single target thing and there are frames that do this without combining skills.

And I also forgot, I hate the ragdoll on Landslide, I don't know what you think about it, but it's so annoying making an energy leech fly away.

 

 

Edited December 26, 2017 by -CM-Machete

[MuscleBeach]

14 minutes ago, -CM-Machete said:

And I also forgot, I hate the ragdoll on Landslide, I don't know what you think about it, but it's so annoying making an energy leech fly away.

Yep, hate it. It's my only real Landslide change I want. I see it as a bug but I'm not sure it is. Just turning it into a knockdown is fine. You can target knockdowns but not rag dolls for some reason. You would lose the cool factor of sending people flying like you're Sauron. 

15 minutes ago, -CM-Machete said:

The agro it draws is just irrelevant another "dreamland" design idea from DE that only works in theory, enemies still prioritize the closest target so it doesn't work that much as actual agro.

That's what I imagine is going to happen when I test the mod but still, considering how much detail I go into, I feel obligated to test it anyways. It's only fair to the devs.

17 minutes ago, -CM-Machete said:

They don't really kill much, and you can't use them as DR like Nekros' minions. About Petrify, I would pretty much pick them being one-shot by Landslide, or make it so petrify removes armor calculations while they are petrified while being hit by Landslide. There would be really no argument because it's a single target thing and there are frames that do this without combining skills.

It can't be a 1 hit kill thing. That means I can sacrifice a mod slot for just a tiny but of duration to insta-kill anything that's not a special unit (immune to petrify). But ignore armor is a good idea. I don't think DE would add 100% ignore armor. But just like frost avalanche, it could reduce by 40%, affected by power strength. That buffs the effect, which Petrify needs but it doesn't address the delivery. Currently, you die when you cast Petrify. Considering how strong the new effect is, simply removing the slow walk from Petrify may be good enough. 

If they want to limit this armor reduction to only work with Landslide, fine. But I'd like to get a little snazzier and have all Impact damage work with the armor reduction instead. I'm all for synergizing loadouts / teams with warframes. 

[MuscleBeach]

With the announcement that Atlas is getting a rework, I thought it'd be a good idea to bump this up and recap while he's getting some attention from the devs. 

I tested the Titanic Rumbler Augment like I previously said I would: It wasn't good. It didn't hold aggro and the few times it did, it died quickly. This was on a sortie 1 mission but I also tested it in other places. 

General Atlas issues: He's vulnerable between punches (alleviated by a quick thinking setup), Landslide is his only sortie viable build, and his 4, 3, and recast of 2 are not practical to use, which is why Landslide is his only viable build. 

Recap of Atlas ability:

Spoiler

Passive: No issues.

Landslide: No real issues. Can't target ragdolled enemies with Landslide. This means you have no one to target after your third punch and very vulnerable to damage while you spin around in circles looking for an enemy to punch before you die or panic parkour around a corner. 

Tectonics: Not the greatest ability considering he's a melee focused warframe and doesn't sit still (unless Rumblers can get fixed). But, it does have its uses still. No issues here but buffs also wouldn't hurt (being so small, some health buffs would be nice as it's pretty squishy). 

Tectonics Recast: The time it takes to cast this (and it's a pretty quick cast) is a liability compared to what it'll do. The CC it provides is underwhelming and its hit box is rather small. Enemies tend to be pushed around it rather than knocked down. The damage is nothing to talk about either. 

Petrify: You walk slowly to CC people in a cone. People say it stones too slowly but it doesn't. Its main issue is that you are walking very slowly to CC maybe 10% of the people attacking you (It's a cone, not a full circle AOE). So you become an easy target without really making an impact.

Rumblers: They have no battlefield presence. You cast them and the tides of battle don't really change at all. They acquire new targets slowly, which means they don't really get much done. For an ultimate skill, it does about as much as a mediocre at best #1 skill. 

 

Augment mods:

Path of Statues: This does nothing because if I'm landsliding, everyone behind me is dead.

Tectonic Fracture: This should be the base skill. There's nothing wrong with the augment mod but considering that tectonics is already awkward to have on a warframe like Atlas, no one will want to use a mod slot on this. 

Ore Gaze: Too ineffective. No one wants to bring an Atlas when you have Nekros who can do the same thing in a large AOE. If Atlas was the only loot warframe, this might be an ok augment but since nekros are so easy to find, this augment has no use. Codex scans are also outshined from Helios. You have to sacrifice too much to make this augment work. 

Titanic Rumbler: The Rumbler isn't very good at taunting and when it does manage to taunt a group, it dies very quickly. 

 

Recap of Atlas Solutions:

Spoiler

Passive: No changes.

Landslide: Make Ragdolled enemies targetable or turn the ragdoll into a knockdown. 

Tectonics: Buff its health. It's so small, it should at least be stronger than other, full coverage, walls. It also makes more sense to be more durable than a sheet of ice. 

Tectonics Recast: Pick one Sentence: Change the recast to summon a mini-rumbler. Remove the recast ability. Make the Augment mod the standard recast. Bigger hitbox on the boulder, quicker roll speed, and much more damage, maybe based on its remaining health.

Petrify: Make it work in a full circle and reduce its base range to compensate and allow us to move at normal speed. Or Rework the skill. There's TONS of rework ideas in this thread and not all of them are complete overhauls. Another idea, keep it as is but let us move faster and also add in a full circle AOE with half range and reduced strength so the focus is still on the cone. 

Rumblers: More aggressive targeting and attack speed. Make them health based OR duration based but not both. And without more radical changes than I'm suggesting right now, I would also say to lower their energy cost to 75. 

 

Augment mods:

Until the above abilities have had some fixes, I'm not going to worry about these. Simply make them address the issues I've detailed so that we have to make real choices when choosing if we use the augment mods for them. 

There are so many more ideas than I listed above but I don't want to write an overly long post. Let me know what you guys think are good and bad suggestions. Please suggest realistic changes, not complete overhauls. We have enough overhauls in this thread that we can make a couple new completely original warframes :P 

[Reedkage]

Personally I like Atlas's theme as a stone titan, but like most players I found skills 2-4 lacking. Here are my two cents on possible changes that can be done to improve him a bit.

 

Landslide: Currently good as it is as a 1 ability. Though most people are asking for buffs to it, I think the augment should be changed instead.

-The first punch on a new enemy will petrify them, and any other punch on a petrified enemy will do bonus impact damage and ignores armor. This will synergize better with Petrify, though that skill is also pretty weak.

-Path of Statues Augment: Currently not very viable as a skill. Compared to Nezha who can run fire trails around an objective and basically cover the entire map in flames, the path that Atlas creates from his punch rushing is small and the odds of an enemy stepping on it is extremely low unless the player did some fancy maneuvering. I would rather see a bigger build up in power strength and damage the more its used in rapid succession, like with each kill during his Landslide he gains a buff until his combo counter runs out.

 

 

Tectonics: Only real use for it is to block a door and even then its not perfect. The augment is also not that great, you can wall off a defense point instead, but a Frost bubble or a Gara wall would be more efficient. In my opinion it can either be tweaked better or reworked.

-Casting Tectonics will cause the wall to spring up like usual, but anything under it when it springs up will be hit with impact damage.

-Second cast will send the boulder flying until it hits a target and it detonates (or with another cast) for impact or blast damage.

-The wall can be targeted by Landslide, which will blow out the wall and hits enemies with debris.

-Wall can be replaced by a wave of stone spikes, similar to Frost's Ice wave or Nidus's Virulence

 

Petrify: Everyone is in agreement that this is waaaay too slow and unreliable for practical use.

-Make it an instant cast petrify for anything looking at Atlas instead of a gradual change.

-Fix the weird cone AoE

-Allow the use of other abilities to break out of the toggle, such as Landslide (similar to what they did to Hydroid)

-Make petrified enemies have reduced armor

-Inflict bonus damage if petrified enemies are struck by Landslide

-Ore Gaze augment: Change it so that petrified enemies have a slightly increased chance to drop rare loot when killed. This will make his farming capabilities on par with others like Hydroid, Nekros or Ivara, and make him a viable option for farming.

 

Rumblers: Personally I like the idea of Rumblers. Are they good? Not in the least, but with recent content I have a few ideas to improve it.

-Make the Rumblers mod-able. With the pending update with Khora and her pet, we get a Warframe Ability-based companion that can be equipped with mods. This is very important because customizing is what players love the most. Currently Rumblers depend solely on Atlas's stats, but if they depend on their own mods for stats instead, then I can see them being a lot more useful.

-Improve the AI a lot.

-Make the Rumblers target anything your cross hair is targeting when you recast your skill again (similar to Khora's kavat skill.)

-Make Rumblers prioritize targets that have been petrified, or turn petrified enemies into mini-Rumblers when they kill them.

 

[MuscleBeach]

On 1/19/2018 at 5:58 PM, Redkage said:

Landslide: Currently good as it is as a 1 ability. Though most people are asking for buffs to it, I think the augment should be changed instead.

-The first punch on a new enemy will petrify them, and any other punch on a petrified enemy will do bonus impact damage and ignores armor. This will synergize better with Petrify, though that skill is also pretty weak.

Your first bullet buffs landslide. Landslide does not and should not have any buffs. This is being greedy on an already great skill. 

On 1/19/2018 at 5:58 PM, Redkage said:

-Path of Statues Augment: Currently not very viable as a skill. [snip] the path that Atlas creates from his punch rushing is small and the odds of an enemy stepping on it is extremely low unless the player did some fancy maneuvering. I would rather see a bigger build up in power strength and damage the more its used in rapid succession, like with each kill during his Landslide he gains a buff until his combo counter runs out.

I agree the augment is useless. Anything behind you is dead from landsliding. Anything in front of you is about to die. I think a redundant augment (more damage) is ok as it's not really needed but those crazy people asking for a buff to Landslide can have what they want. I think Atlas's weaknesses (very vulnerable between punches) should be addressed outside of this skill/augment. 

On 1/19/2018 at 5:58 PM, Redkage said:

Tectonics:

Making the wall target-able with Landslide and it exploding is more cool than anything. It doesn't fix any of Atlas's issues or make me want to cast it more often. 

The Impact damage on raising the wall is pointless because of Atlas's second big issue (why cast his other skills when I can just Landslide again?)

Wave of Spikes is too big of a change to happen. Also, it needs to address Atlas's issues for it to matter.

On 1/19/2018 at 5:58 PM, Redkage said:

Petrify: Everyone is in agreement that this is waaaay too slow and unreliable for practical use.

-Make it an instant cast petrify for anything looking at Atlas instead of a gradual change.

-Fix the weird cone AoE

-Allow the use of other abilities to break out of the toggle, such as Landslide (similar to what they did to Hydroid)

-Make petrified enemies have reduced armor

-Inflict bonus damage if petrified enemies are struck by Landslide

-Ore Gaze augment: Change it so that petrified enemies have a slightly increased chance to drop rare loot when killed. This will make his farming capabilities on par with others like Hydroid, Nekros or Ivara, and make him a viable option for farming.

It's not really slow but it is unreliable due to its narrow range and making you walk (a sitting duck for the enemies not in the cone, which is a lot of enemies). You can make any change to this skill but as long as it's a cone, it's not going to get any use. Why? Because what's the point of CCing what's in front of me when I can Landslide and just kill them. It needs to be a full AOE or be something I can turn on while using my other skills. Walking while casting isn't even the biggest issue. Plenty of warframes come to a stand still to cast their CC but the thing is that their CC is actually effective. 

On 1/19/2018 at 5:58 PM, Redkage said:

Rumblers: Personally I like the idea of Rumblers. Are they good? Not in the least, but with recent content I have a few ideas to improve it.

-Make the Rumblers mod-able. With the pending update with Khora and her pet, we get a Warframe Ability-based companion that can be equipped with mods. This is very important because customizing is what players love the most. Currently Rumblers depend solely on Atlas's stats, but if they depend on their own mods for stats instead, then I can see them being a lot more useful.

-Improve the AI a lot.

-Make the Rumblers target anything your cross hair is targeting when you recast your skill again (similar to Khora's kavat skill.)

-Make Rumblers prioritize targets that have been petrified, or turn petrified enemies into mini-Rumblers when they kill them.

The best thing they can do for atlas is fix the Rumblers so that he has an alternate play-style to Landslide. Why use Petrify when I can just keep Landsliding? Because I'm no longer a Landslide build. I'm now a Rumbler build and can make use of the other skills. I bolded the parts I agree with. I don't want them to target what I aim at. If I'm aiming at it, it's dead. Mini-Rumblers would be a good replacement for tectonics recasting but I disagree on turning all Petrified killed enemies into mini-rumblers. 

Also, buff the augment mod to taunt better and have 100% of the stats of the two rumblers. Having 1 Rumbler vs is a nerf (you're attacking 50% less enemies) and the taunt doesn't make up for it in the slightest as he dies pretty quickly, assuming he actually taunted enemies. 

 

There's 3 issues on Atlas that need to be fixed, the first two are major issues:

Make Rumblers a good alternative to Landslide.

Why use X ability when I can just Landslide and kill them?

You're very vulnerable between Landslides.

Edited January 22, 2018 by MuscleBeach

[MuscleBeach]

I wanted a less radical option for petrify. This is what I came up with and added it to the OP.

On 10/26/2017 at 11:02 AM, MuscleBeach said:

Tweak Solution: Tweak as in adding a bonus effect like with the recent Sleight of hand change. Add a circular AOE stoning effect (replacing or in addition to the cone) with lesser range and lesser strength, that way Atlas isn't completely getting blown to bits by the 300 degrees that petrify isn't hitting. 

What do you guys think? Are there any issues with this?