Atlas: Better than you think

Atlas. Strongboi and infamous public fister - but is he good?

Yes. Yes actually, he is. Is he the absolute best DPS in-game? No. But he is in no way the trash-heap people make him out to be.

(This guide isn't a full overview of Atlas and his kit. This guide is meant to show that Atlas has great damage potential, and how he can achieve this)

Introduction

Atlas has long been slated as trash. A bottom tier DPS and an average tank. Despite this Atlas has always held a small cult following of people who swear by him - and personally I never really understood why. I used the same builds as them, and despite my best efforts, I could never get Atlas to perform.

However, since the armour rework, I decided to revisit some older frames that never got playtime, and inevitably Atlas was on that list - as I'm sure he is for multiple people. And after a day or two of testing builds, Atlas has pleasantly surprised me. His DPS isn't Saryn-levels, sure, but he is definitely no slouch...

My aim with this guide is to show everyone that Atlas doesn't deserve this old reputation he has clinging on to him, and that he's worth the build investment.

The Build

Stats:
Strength - 221%
Range - 100%
Efficiency - 130%
Duration - 128%
Health - 1,872
Armour - 1,389

(2 Forma used - Default 'D' changed to a '-', and an Umbral polarity was added)

This is the build I've been using. This build provides enough damage output to keep Atlas relevant towards later levels, with enough utilitarian stats to keep the rest of his kit usable. Now my build does have some flexibility. Streamline can be dropped for any other mod of your choice - Stretch if you want extra range or Adaptation for more tankiness, for example. The Exilus slot is open too - as a 'spare' slot to customise this build more to your taste.

Atlas is one of the few remaining warframes left in the game who instead of having an exalted weapon, draws stats from the mods on your melee weapon. This is my stat stick setup:



I use the Venka Prime as my stat stick. Now, there's a mod in that build very few people will recognise, and I'll explain why that mod is there in the "Tricks of the Build" section. Lastly, I want to note that rivens DO affect Atlas's Landslide. Now at the time, I don't have any great high-percentage rivens to test, but if you do - feel free to incorporate it into your stat stick! However, even without a god-roll riven, this build kicks out an intense amount of damage so this build is more accessible to a wider range of players.

Tricks of the Build

Now there are some neat tricks to Atlas's 'Landslide' ability, that are not told to you - but definitely affect his damage output. This is where I intend to explain how I exploit those tricks.

Firstly, Atlas's fists ARE affected by the melee combo counter. Now most people think Atlas builds his combo multiplier too slowly for it to be worth modding for, but this is absolutely not the case! When Atlas's fists connect with an enemy, it gives 1 count towards the combo counter. Makes sense right? But wait! Landslide has a small AoE around the initial point of contact, and every enemy tagged in this AoE adds to the counter as well!

Now, the first hit of his 3-hit combo has an AoE of 2m, the second has 4m and every hit from the 3rd on-wards has a 6m AoE. So this means if Atlas strikes an enemy, and within 6m of that enemy are another 4 enemies, that ONE punch counts 5 points towards the multiplier - and we can exploit this further! The mod "True Punishment" seen on my stat stick lets Atlas exploit this further by DOUBLING the amount of combo counter points you get, whenever you would get them. Thus, using my previous scenario, a small crowd of 5 enemies could potentially provide 10 combo counter points PER HIT! This lets Atlas scale as hard as Ash's "Rising Storm" - which is pretty bloody impressive.

Secondly, the Venka Prime. Some weapons have a unique 'bonus' or 'passive' available to them. Now here's the best bit: some of these passives can be used by Atlas! (there are a lot of other non-weapon specific things that do synergise with Landslide. I'm only going to list the weapons, but a list of all these effects can be found on the Warframe Wiki's page on Atlas.)

Here is a list of weapon passives Atlas can use:
-Ack & Brunt: Stores elemental damage received while blocking, and converts to a buff - up to 70%. Landslide can use that damage, but it does not consume the bonus
-Fragor Prime: Boost to starting combo multiplier. Grants starting 30 points.
-Furax Wraith: Same as the Fragor Prime, but grants 20 instead of 30.
-Gazal Machete: Gains 25% corrosive damage upon the activation of Djinn's "Fatal Attraction" ability.
-Lesion: Gains 100% toxin damage when you activate a status proc. Landslide gains this boost, but cannot re-activate it when the timer expires.
-Venka Prime: Higher combo counter maximum (13x vs. the normal 12x maximum)

Now I personally chose to use the Venka Prime for that increased combo counter maximum. The reason is that Atlas gains a 25% damage boost per combo multiplier tier - up to a maximum of 3.75x with the usual 12x maximum. However, with the Venka, you can raise that multiplier to 4x at the 13x cap.

The Maths

(An important thing to note: you can absolutely use Arcane Blade Charger instead of Fury. It is a gigantic boost to damage, but I personally find it less consistent than Fury - hence why only Fury was accounted for here.)

The builds previously mentioned don't look all that special, but once you look at all the buffs Atlas can stack, THAT'S where he starts to shine. The damage calculation Atlas uses is this:

Base Damage x (1 + damage mods) x (1 + elemental mods) x (1 + strength mods)

To note: damage numbers used in the calculation are used in decimal form, so "Primed Pressure Point is treated as '1.65' instead of its '165%' stat. So without arcanes/external buffs (like the combo counter and his Rubble Heap augment, Atlas's damage spread looks like this:

350 x (1 + 2.65) x (1 + 3.3) x (1 + 1.21) = 12,140

BUT, here's the fun part. That's only on the initial punch of a 3-hit combo. The second hit looks like this:

700 x (1 + 2.65) x (1 + 3.3) x (1 + 1.21) = 24,280

That's a bit better right? Now for the third hit:

1400 x (1 + 2.65) x (1 + 3.3) x (1 + 1.21) = 48,560

And there it is! That's the number Atlas will work around for the majority of the time. Now, it's time to apply modifiers to that third calculation - to see how far we can take Atlas. Note: The damage shown in that 3rd-hit calculation is used for every consecutive hit after the third hit, in the combo window of Atlas's first ability.

First, I'm going to apply the 180% melee damage added by Arcane Fury:
1400 x (1 + 4.45) x (1 + 3.3) x (1 + 1.21) = 72,507.9

Lastly, if we apply the multipliers granted by both Rubble Heap (2x; which brings the damage to 145,015.8), and the extra 4x damage provided by the Venka's increased maximum combo counter brings his damage up to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ JUICY 580,063.12!

Now hold on. I know that sounds crazy - I mean Atlas doing half a million damage??? But it does check out. Testing this build, at maximum Rubble, with Arcane Fury active AND the combo counter maxed out, Atlas can 3-hit level 150 Corrupted Bombards - who for reference at that level have 1,204,252.11 effective health.

Oh, did I mention that Landslide also gains an extra 50% damage against enemies affected by Petrify? Because that's also a thing...

Closing

Welp. That was a lot of typing.

I hope you've enjoyed this guide, and I hope that this guide has shown that Atlas can indeed output some impressive damage for a supposed "trash" warframe.

Now I must clarify: I'm not 100% certain on the maths shown in this guide - primarily the multipliers granted by Rubble Heap and the combo counter. I do not know for sure that those bonuses are added after the calculation, and not in the calculation. But from all my testing, it seems to check out. If you see an egregious error, please point it out and I'll do my best to correct it.

Thanks again, and enjoy fisting! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[Mole]

Better than you think, not as good as as you'd hoped.*

[Obi-Juan Kenobi]

This is fine, but there's a few things missing I'd suggest a look into.
First, the other stat stick options, being the Mire and Tekko. They have their own purposes in general and greatly effect how your builds work around Atlas's abilities. Mire can output a lot of damage immediately, and can provide an extra energy boost via Blight procs. Tekko makes the base status and crit chance on landslide more reasonable to use, and makes a crit/status build actually possible.
Also, the need for Flow is somewhat questionable. It comes down to what you have available, but it's usually better to drop it in favor of more duration, probably through Augur Message, if you can run an Arcane Energize + Dethcube combo with Rubble Heap. The constant energy output that you get from that pairing should be enough to get you to the 1400 rubble stack.
Also consider putting in range on Atlas. Strength doesn't scale as hard as one would hope, and that extra range can make building up your rubble way easier.

[HitmanSeth]

[To add on to my previous comment]

I remember that when Khora was initally shown to the public, there was a large call from the playerbase to have her whip be an exalted weapon (a similar call was made when Harrow was announced, but that was more speculatory) and for whatever reason DE said they "didn't want her to be another exalted weapon frame"

Given the changes made a while back to exalted weapons as a whole, think it's about time DE do something about it.

[HitmanSeth]

@Stavik

Yeah I also think its kinda dumb. I do wish DE would finally address this. Personally I'd love to run around with the Gram P on Atlas - a hunk of steel wielded by a mountain of meat, but alas...

[Teshuah]

Nice, I'm a huge Atlas fan. Now that I know his melee is a stat stick.... ggwp

[Stavik]

i absolutely abhore the fact that they didn't give exalted weapons to all frames at once. Last thing I want is to have to run with a stat stick over the weapons I actually want to use or simply just forget to equip it and gimp the frame.

[Hawk]

Your statstick layout was or at least appears better then the one that I had on my Venka Prime setup, though it's hard to tell during regular gameplay I'd have to test it out in the sim.

Range also effects his 1, at least that's what it seems to do, because when I punch it seems to break statues further out away from me but again not sure. Though with range in combination with his 4 is defiantly better then the default 100% range, I know that for a fact.. I agree that it's a playstyle thing so I'm just giving you my experience as well

[HitmanSeth]

@Hawk

I have had that happen to me a few times, where I don't petrify enough mobs to get rubble quickly. However - most likely because of my playstyle - that isn't frequent enough for me to re-mod Atlas. With higher efficiency (and substituting Streamline for Hunter Adrenaline/Rage in higher end missions) I tend to get better mileage out of him that way. Although an argument for higher range can definitely be made.

With your point about his 1's range: I personally don't find the 6m range of the third strike "too short" to be usable. But maybe for higher-level content (Arbi's and above) that might be the best move to make.

Thanks for pointing it out!

[Hawk]

Gotcha, I'll have to look into it, though I've found that having low ability range can hurt you since it allows for more coverage when casting your 2 and 4 along with making your 1 be able to "punch" more mobs then just the 3 directly in front of you.

[HitmanSeth]

Corrections added.