Atlas: Nourish Landslide

TL;DR

Atlas is a health tank, built around Landslide, with everything feeding into that. Landslide, his exalted melee, can put out some pretty high numbers. Not Ash levels, but high enough. Like Ash, Landslide is primarily focused on individual targets, but it can also deal AoE damage. If you can’t target something, though, you’ve got to use a weapon instead. The rubble mechanic could be better, but that’s the trade-off you pay. Helminth has two options here: Nourish for energy economy, or Omamori for blocking damage.

Weaknesses: Untargetable enemies mean no Landslide damage at all. While Atlas is tanky, he isn’t invincible compared to some other frames. Energy economy can also be a problem, which is why Nourish is used. A classic nullifier just stops you.

The playstyle here is simple: Petrify something, Landslide it, collect rubble, and keep moving. Doing so gives you rubble, which gives you more armour. You can use that rubble to heal yourself or restore lost armour. You don’t have to constantly play around the rubble mechanic, but it does offer some useful benefits. At a certain point, Landslide becomes free to cast, which makes it easier to keep punching things.

Rubble does have a timer, though, so you need to keep collecting it if you want to maintain those benefits. 

Archon Shards

Do you need to use shards? No, but there are a few worth considering.

Do you want to do more damage? 

Red or Violet Shards can be used for critical damage. Violet Shards need over 500 energy to double that effect. With Primed Flow, meeting that requirement is fairly easy, so I have added two Violet Shards here. I only added two this time. In the past, I went a bit crazy and used five. Two is enough for me, leaving two flex slots for other options.

Do you want a quality-of-life option? 

An Amber Shard for starting energy lets you get going immediately without having to worry about building up energy first. That is probably my preferred option for general comfort.

You could add another Violet Shard or two for the Equilibrium effect, depending on how much energy sustain you want. Having budget Equilibrium with more energy and health per orb is really hard to say no on energy hungry farm. Amber Shards for casting speed are another option, helping to speed up everything except Landslide itself. (Still annoyed DE won’t do that)

Or you could go another route. It really depends on what you consider important and what you feel the build needs. Do you want more damage or quality of life?

Build for Atlas

The main thing here is that Atlas doesn’t need a complicated stat spread. Power Strength makes Landslide hit harder, while survivability keeps Atlas alive long enough to keep punching things. This is why we have a full Umbral setup.

Range gives Landslide more reach, which makes it feel better to use. It also helps Petrify affect more enemies, giving you more opportunities to create rubble.

Energy is the awkward part. Atlas wants to keep using Landslide, so anything that helps with his energy economy is valuable. This is where Nourish comes in, or Hunter Adrenaline when using Omamori.

Aura: Steel Charge boosts melee damage, which is perfect for Atlas. It also provides some extra capacity for the build.

Umbral Set: All three Umbral mods are being used here: Umbral Vitality, Umbral Fiber and Umbral Intensify. They provide extra survivability and Power Strength. Using all three also gives you the full Umbral set bonus. If you want to use less Forma, an unranked Umbral Fiber still counts towards that bonus.

Adaptation and Primed Flow are here for survivability and energy. Primed Flow also helps with the 500-energy requirement for the Violet Shards. You can swap out Adaptation for Hunter Adrenaline if you want to push towards level cap. With Omamori and an Arcane, you can cope with taking health damage and use that damage to generate energy.

Range mods: Cunning Drift, Archon Stretch, Augur Reach and Overextended.

Overextended reduces Power Strength, but I am willing to accept that trade-off for the extra range. More range means Landslide can reach more enemies, while Petrify can affect a larger area and help create more rubble. The lost Power Strength can be partly recovered through Arcane Bellicose later.

Archon Stretch is here mainly for the range, but it also gives bonus energy regeneration when electric damage is triggered. My companion handles that, so it becomes a useful source of passive energy. It benefits Petrify as well as Landslide, since more range means more opportunities to create rubble and gain armour.

Augments are nice, but they aren’t really needed. I can’t fit them into this build anyway.

Arcanes

Arcane Blessing and Arcane Bellicose work well together. Blessing gives Atlas extra health, while Bellicose converts that extra health into Power Strength. More health also works nicely with Atlas’s high armour, making him feel like a walking mountain while increasing Landslide’s damage.

Persistence is a very powerful health-tank arcane, we have a ton of health and armour here. Enough more than 1,400 so effect even if we lost armour still remains. However is a key problem here anything that can nullfier you will stop this effect includes stuff like magnetic procs. Which why I gone with Omamori, blocks incoming damage 50% of the time. Which means i hope you can avoid that proc. you have a surprisingly strong defensive setup. Yes losing shield gating sucks but being more tanky is the trade off. 

Hunter Adrenaline also works well here because Atlas is expected to take some health damage. That damage is converted into energy, helping him keep casting.

Landslide

Landslide is a melee attack that hits enemies within a radius. Because it counts as a melee strike, Range affects it, making Range mods very useful. It has its own internal combo counter and timer. If you recast it within five seconds of the first strike, you get a casting discount.

Yes, it can also critically hit.

Which why we end up punching things really hard and creating bunch of rocks. That whole deal easy to understand you punch something and normally it dies. Also takes out anybody close to it. 

Attack speed does nothing here, and casting speed doesn’t make the punches themselves faster either. Range is what matters. One more thing worth mentioning is that while Atlas is sliding, he is completely immune to damage.

Melee Exposure and Melee Influence are the two main choices here. Exposure adds corrosive damage, while Influence adds electric damage and helps spread your damage further. Say you hit for a couple million; that corrosive damage plus gas or electric damage now. If you’re already hitting for a couple of million damage, being able to deal that damage outside your immediate range can be more useful than simply increasing the original hit.

This gives you a choice between focusing on individual targets or improving your AoE. For Steel Path and endgame content, that extra AoE is really strong to have.

Build gas for Exposure and electricity for Influence. Leaving behind a gas cloud that does a couple of million damage is rather good.

Condition Overload gives your melee attacks more damage for each status effect affecting the enemy. Using a companion to apply those statuses means free extra damage for Atlas.

Primed Pressure Point and Condition Overload can be used together, although they suffer from diminishing returns because both increase melee damage. Normally you don’t pair them together but because we don’t really have any other good options here this best option to use. Primed Pressure Point gives you more front-loaded damage, while Condition Overload becomes stronger as more status effects are applied. Together, they can still produce a very strong result once everything is fully stacked. 

This is a rather unique melee build for Atlas because Landslide is heavily impact-focused. Outside of that, it follows many of the usual melee-building principles. It just leaves out attack speed and a few other things that don’t benefit Landslide.

Helminth

I find swapping out Tectonics for almost anything to be more useful.

Rumblers aren’t particularly good, but they can provide some backup rubble and keep attention away from you. You can also break them for rubble in an emergency, although relying on them for this is rather costly and inconsistent.

Nourish or Omamori are the two options I like to run.

Nourish provides better energy economy and Viral status effects, which is just nice to have. It helps you keep casting Landslide without constantly worrying about energy.

Omamori is the more defensive option. Being able to block incoming damage or heal yourself 50% of the time is rather good. Combined with Persistence, you get a setup that sounds like it shouldn’t work, but somehow does.

Other Things

Companion-wise, you want something that can apply status effects for Condition Overload. I find the Hound to be rather useful for this, although at a certain point Hounds become rather easy to kill.

Diriga is a good replacement option. It is safer, can help group enemies together. You just want to make sure that electric damage is actually being applied. That for the free energy generation from Archon Stretch.If you don’t want that you can downgrade that and reduce your forma costs. 

Any good primary or secondary can deal with what you can’t punch to death. Melee-wise, you’re using your fists, so that slot can be used for utility, such as movement speed or Parkour Velocity.

Closing Thoughts

Atlas is a frame that surprised me when revisiting him. Powerful, but with a couple of weaknesses. Nothing fancy is going on here. It’s a rather simple design that comes together and, honestly, isn’t bad.

I rarely see people playing him, which is a surprise considering how good he is. You punch things with your rock fists, doing a ton of damage, and you’re very hard to kill. When that doesn’t work, you shoot it instead.

Not perfect, but it gets the job done.

Sure, things could be better with rubble, but you can mod around that these days, so it’s less important. Or you can just ignore it.

Overall, Atlas is a shockingly good frame with a bad reputation if you played him years ago and never updated your build.

Turns out Atlas isn’t stuck between a rock and a hard place anymore.