Various questions about Atlas

[Malidictus]

I really like my Atlas frame. Between high base stats, substantial self-healing and reliable control, he's probably single-handedly responsible for keeping me in the game long enough to want to stay :) I know people trash-talk him for end game, but I'll worry about that when I get to it. In the meantime, though, there are a few things about Atlas I don't understand or need a second opinion on. In no particular order...

Landslide damage modification

Landslide is mostly straightforward - punch things, punch more for bonus damage and energy discount, punch petrified enemies for more health and armour. The wiki is somewhat unclear about how its damage is calculated, though, and the in-game display doesn't help. The wiki first claims that Landslide damage is affected by "most mods" and gives an example with Pressure Point and Shocking Touch. It then goes on to specify that damage is also affected by equipped melee mods... Which Pressure Point and Shocking Touch are. Am I missing something here?

Near as I can tell, Landslide's damage is NOT affected by my equipped melee weapon's base stats, but IS affected by the mods I've put into my melee weapon, as well as any mods which typically affect all melee weapons. The in-game skill display always shows Landslide as doing 350 damage (its base) regardless of what I have equipped, so I've no reliable way to tell. I'm assuming that stuff like Serration and Horner Strike don't affect it?

And what about its criticals? Landslide is listed as having a 5% critical hit chance and a 200% critical damage multipler (i.e. *2?), but are THOSE affected by my weapon? Because if not, that's some pretty poor critical chance that doesn't seem worth building for.

Rumblers survivability

Firstly, why do my Rumblers seem invulnerable? Both the game and the Wiki keep going on about their health and armour and so on, but in all my time using Rumblers, I've yet to see them take ANY damage that I have a means to track. I've left them to fight bosses on their own and their health bars don't budge until the things time out. A friend of mine speculated that maybe I'd made them too tough - too much health and armour. In-game, they're listed as having 14 640 health and 800 armour which... Granted, is a lot. But you'd think they'd still show SOME damage on their health bars, no? If it's ever happened, I ain't seen it.

Mind you, I'm not complaining. It's just I'm not entirely sure what I'm seeing there.

Atlas Augment Mods

Now, I don't know the game well enough to make an informed decision here... But it seems to me like the Atlas Augment Mods kind of suck. Path of Statues seems like the least terrible one as it offers bonus means of petrification, but I don't actually cover all that much distance with Landslide typically so I fail to see how I'd use it. Tectonic Fracture takes what's already a pretty useless skill and makes it even more useless. Yay, I can now NOT use Bulwark three times as much! Ore Gaze is... OK, I guess, but neither scanning enemies nor a bit of extra loot is worth taking up a slot. Tiranic Rumbler just seems... Frankly terrible. It cuts down my number of Rumblers by half but the single Rumbler it gives me isn't twice as good. Yes, it supposedly taunts, but I haven't had issue with Rumblers running interference. And again - is that worth taking up a slot?

I'm not saying my mod build is great, but it just seems like there are better things I can do with my slots than those. At best they're mild conveniences, at worst they actively ruin my skills. Am I missing anything here?

Atlas regular Mods

My atlas is modded pretty basic. In fact, I should have a screenshot of it kicking about. Will slap it somewhere here in post. For the most part, though, I have the most straightforward ones - health, armour, shields, energy, ability improvements. Synergies aside, Atlas seems to favour straightforward building, as he has fairly high stats across the board and seems worth building for all of them. I DO need all the energy I can get, though, because petrification is essentially my lifeline. Not only is it a massively powerful form of control, it also heals and armours me. It also carves through large swaths of enemies with hilarious ease.

Augments aside, are there any mods that I absolutely SHOULD have, keeping in mind I'm MR 5 and don't have access to end-game? Are there any mods I absolutely shouldn't have? For instance, Ability Range and Ability Efficiency seem absolutely necessary to me, to try and get the most I can out of his VERY expensive petrification skills, but stuff like Ability Strength? Is that important? Ability Duration? I kind of overloaded the Frame on basic stats so I don't exactly have a lot of slots to play around with :)

*edit*
Here's a screenshot of my build. It's a little old, but the mods themselves haven't changed.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1494794093

[Lord Commander]

Landslide can do an insane amount of damage. if modded the right way, it can easily kill Lv 125 Corrupted bombards.
The way Landslide's damage is calculated is unique, exalted weapons (like Excalibur's exalted blade) used to be calculated the same way then they made them into a separate weapon.

i'll try to explain how it works :

Think of it as a separate melee weapon called Landslide, the base damage of that melee weapon is the damage that you see in the in-game display. Then that base damage gets affected by all the mods that you have on your melee weapon. (The melee weapon you're using does not matter, only the mods affect Landslide.)

However, Landslide is not affected by any range or attack speed mods in your melee weapon, plus it has low crit and status chance, so when modding a melee weapon for Landslide, you don't use range, speed, crit, or status mods.

So the mods you want are damage, elemental damage, Combo counter, faction damage, Augments and Rivens.

Here's my build as an example :

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1496202595

-Use the normal version of the mods if you don't have the Primed, and use another 90% elemental mod if you don't have Collision force.

- I'm using Dual Cleavers because of the Justice Blades augment.

- Spoiled Strike gives +100% damage and -20% attack speed, Landslide is not affected by attack speed so this mod has no downside here.

- Body Count (or any other combo mod like Drifting Contact or Gladiator Rush) is very important:

Landslide is affected by the melee combo multiplier and it stacks with Landslide's own multiplier, so if you have a 4x multiplier from Landslide and let's sat a 2.5x multipler from the combo counter you end up with a x10 damage multiplier.

Rumbler's survivability : They are very tanky, i just tested them vs 5 Lv125 Corpus Techs and it took them about 40 seconds to kill one Rumbler, so vs low to mid level enemies you won't even see their HP drop.

About the Atlas Augment Mods, Titanic Rumbler is ok but i still think its not worth the mod slot, and Tectonic Fracture is only good for defense and even then i don't know if its worth it...

Atlas build :

Strength gives your Rumblers more HP and more damage, and gives your Landslide more damage.

i would suggest you use intensify and continuity instead of fast deflection and equilibrium.

Here's my Atlas build :

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1496202811

[Malidictus]

On Landslide:

Thank you for the explanation. So, basically treat Landslide like a separate weapon with the same mods as my melee weapon (aside from a few exceptions). Got it! I'm currently not looking to mod my melee weapon specifically FOR Landslide at the expense of its own performance simply because I still want to USE my melee weapon on its own :) I will, however, see what I can shift around to benefit both, if I can. Kind of wish the Wiki had explained it like you did, though, instead of the roundabout way they went with. Either way, thanks.

On Rumblers:

Yeah, I think you're right. I tried experimenting with them - basically summon the Rumblers and stare at their health bar. They do show the little red flash indicative of losing health, but their bar doesn't seem to go down at all. I guess all that health and armour really do make them essentially unkillable by lower-level stuff. Thanks for having a look.

On mods:

So the Augment mods are not worth the slot they take up? Yeah, it's what I thought. They seemed "neat" at best, but hardly useful. I'm still putzing around with Steel Meridian because I might as well, but I don't intend to use any of the Augment mods.

As to the more regular ones - yeah, I think I'll get rid of Equilibrium. It just doesn't seem to do enough for how rare energy and especially health orbs are, but it's still taking up a slot that I can probably use for something else. I kind of don't want to give up Fast Deflection, though. That's partially because I like the mod, partially because I'm not entirely convinced Continuity is THAT useful for Atlas. It makes Petrification and Rumblers last longer, but I feel they already last long enough. It improves the combo window for Landslide, but I typically don't rely on that ability too much as I can't support a constant power drain like that. I typically focus on Petrification and Rumblers for the Rubble pick-ups.

Still, that's another vote to ditch Equilibrium - that's definitely something I'm looking to do. Probably drop Intensify in its place. We'll see how that goes in the future, though. I'm still fighting level 20-30 enemies. Maybe I'll need further refinement when I hit end-game, but for now I'll stay off of Continuity and see how things go.

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Thank you kindly for the help! :) I was starting to worry nobody was going to respond. Seems like the forums don't like Atlas, for some reason...