Atlas Guide

## Atlas Overview

(Updated to v15.6)

Atlas can easily handle high HP targets such as bosses and hives with his RRTS marines. He would struggle against them only if there are hordes of weak mobs alongside those bosses, since his RRTS marines as well as their haywire attacks do not focus fire on any enemy by priority.

Unfortunately, since Version 15.2, Boss Troops is even more difficult to get by level 10 due to the abysmal changes to Compartment and Weaponsmith perk costs. To achieve maximum efficiency early, Atlas requires the cooperation of allies in donating minerals to him to allow him to pick Boss Troops by level 10. The mineral requirement for Boss Troops is a myopic and very poor game design decision, which makes it harder than necessary to pick a mastery that should be picked as early as possible. Read more about Boss Troops in the section below.

He is an excellent anti-air hero with his HAWK Protocol mastery.

Atlas has very helpful area of effect auras:

1. Destroying: Increased attack speed and energy regeneration
2. Searching: Increased movement speed and restoration of a % of maximum life per second

As such, he can use his Searching aura to heal smoker in Hellwalker during the very early game when players are struggling with waves of banelings.

## Atlas' Perks for OS and HW

This is the optimal mastery order for non-speedrun multiplayer games. Atlas' best perks are very straightforward:

1. Leadership
2. Air Support
3. Helldivers
4. Onslaught

For quick entry of Perks at the beginning of the match, type (without quotes) "-perk laho".

The combination of Leadership + Air Support + Helldivers is essential for Atlas. Leadership boosts the damage of RRTS and Helldivers by +20%, and improves the damage of Air Support by +50%. Furthermore, Helldivers can be even further buffed with either Search or Destroy auras.

The fourth perk, Onslaught, boosts Atlas' auto-attack damage against air targets, especially heavy flyers and the leviathan.

As such, while Onslaught definitely cannot replace Leadership, Air Support or Helldivers, it fits nicely as a fourth perk due to its boost to Atlas'

1. Auto-attack damage (especially against air targets)
2. Spell damage (specifically nuke damage)
3. Movement speed (further boosted with Destroying Aura)

Absorption is never needed, since when Atlas gets all his talents, and picks the Energy Mastery, he can never run out of energy.

## Atlas' Mastery Order for OS and HW

Given that Atlas is straightforward to play in non-speedrun multiplayer games:

1. Level 0 = Haywire Missile
2. Level 10 = Boss Troops or Energy
3. Level 20 = Energy or Boss Troops
4. Level 30 = Echelon Ultimate
5. Level 40 = Lightweight Equipment
6. 2K Streak = Weapons Research
7. Level 50 = Iron Crusade/ HAWK Protocol
8. Level 60 = HAWK Protocol/ Iron Crusade

Atlas needs Haywire, Boss Troops, Energy (at least until he reaches his 25,000 score), Lightweight, Weapons Research and his Ultimate Mastery. That is a list of 6 requirements for his RRTS marines to be maximally effective.

Ideally Atlas needs Boss Troops at level 10 and Energy mastery by level 20. By level 10, Atlas will usually have about 3000 minerals, therefore allies must donate about 2000 minerals to him.

The reason why Energy mastery is favored at level 20 over Lightweight Equipment is that Atlas will always be energy starved, and will always have charges of RRTS remaining that will be redundant without the required energy.

After level 40, to boost Atlas' auto-attack damage and range, as well as the damage of RRTS, Weapons Research must be picked.

### Weapons Research Mastery

A completed Weapons Research mastery adds the following benefits to Atlas:

1. For his RRTS, +10 extra auto-attack damage
2. For his RRTS, +1.0 extra auto-attack range (from 7.5 to 8.5)
3. For Atlas, +40 to his base auto-attack damage to ground targets
4. For Atlas, +20 to his base auto-attack damage to air targets

## Boss Troops Mastery

The very first mastery that Atlas needs to pick is Haywire mastery.

The second most important mastery is Boss Troops.

* Without Boss Troops, the base cost of a marine spawn is 33 energy for a duration of 23s with slower movement speed.

* With Boss Troops, the cost of a marine spawn becomes 50 energy for a duration of 43s with faster movement speed, alongside other benefits such as increased life maximum and life regeneration.

* This means that for only +17 energy extra (an increase of only 50%), the duration of a marine spawn is almost doubled with the added benefit of being much more durable.
* Additionally, Boss Troops provide the RRTS with increased life maximum, life regeneration and increased movement speed, allowing Atlas to save energy by staying in Destroy mode while pushing.

Therefore Boss Troops is hands down the best early game mastery for Atlas right after Haywire Missiles, and must be taken as early as possible.

Unfortunately, it costs 5000 minerals, which is a very arbitrary barrier to this mastery, and by consequence a very poor game design decision. All heroes start the game with 1000 minerals, and if they donate this to Atlas in the beginning, he can easily pick Boss Troops at level 10.

Atlas has several ways to get 5000 minerals at level 10, none of which are desirable outcomes:

1. Beg for minerals. The vast majority of games are public lobby games, and most of the times, people would rather build an early nuke, than donate minerals. Private games with good players quickly solve this problem. However, from a game design viewpoint, visibility is what attracts more players to the game, not private lobbies among closed circles. Private games are good for speedrunning, but should never be desirable over public games for mundane things such as Boss Troops as mastery selection.
2. Get forced to pick Mercenary as a perk. Picking Mercenary would instantly solve minerals problems for Atlas, but at the heavy cost of wasting a perk slot
3. Hope that your ally is either Dune (with his mandatory Mercenary perk) or a combination of Fury, Anvil or Predator. Those heroes do not need an early game Lightweight Equipment mastery. Fury needs it from Level 40, and Predator and Anvil need it after Level 60. This way, you can expect mineral donations from heroes that would not require minerals themselves.

In short, picking an essential mastery should never depend on the whims of other players, should never pigeonhole a player into picking mercenary perk and should never influence ideal hero compositions in public lobby games, where speedruns are not a concern.

This is vastly different from:

1. Predator picking Adaptive Block mastery by level 20, because he will have plenty of minerals by then to pick this essential mastery.
2. ~~Pyro picking Arsenal mastery for 5000 minerals at level 20 or later, whereby the hero itself usually has 5000 minerals to fund their own mastery.~~ Unfortunately, since the poorly tested Version 15.1, Pyro can no longer pick Arsenal by level 20, because he needs to pick a sub-optimal combination of perks and masteries
3. Dune should always pick Mercenary, therefore picking Conservator for 5000 minerals is never an issue for him.
4. ~~Nova picking Ghost Academy Training mastery for 5000 minerals at level 20+. She also needs to request some minerals given that she has to take Lightweight Equipment mastery early game. However, at level 20, Ricochet mastery is a slightly worse, but acceptable alternative. By comparison, no such alternative exists for Atlas, because Boss Troops is extremely powerful, essential and unparalled by other masteries aside Haywire mastery, which is picked at level 0.~~ Unfortunately, since the poorly tested Version 15.1, Nova is forced to pick a sub-optimal combination of perks and masteries.
5. Anvil picks Borr Procol for 5000 minerals much later than level 50.
6. Fury picks Black Metal Academy for 5000 minerals much later than level 50, if at all.
7. Weapons Research for 5000 minerals or Lightweight Equipment for 7500 minerals, which still progress in stages, even though their total cost is also very high.

As such, denying a Hero an essential early game mastery with a mineral-cost wall is simply poor and narrow understanding of game mechanics by the developer. This narrow understanding was greatly demonstrated in Version 15.1. An attempt was made to reduce the mineral cost of Compartmentalization perk from 22,500 to 22,000, but at least the developer realised that it was a poor design decision and mitigated the consequences.

## Comments on Atlas' other masteries

### Allrounder Mastery

This is a mastery that is scheduled for replacement. It should be picked as end-game mastery for all types of games.

### Supply Drop Mastery

This mastery provides a total of 4 talent points and 20,000 minerals to the team every 20 minutes. In a 4 player game, each player receives 1 talent point and 5000 minerals. Other side benefits involve fully restoring every hero's life, shields and energy and providing a "free" fortify to a target. Because its benefits are very minor relative to other masteries, this mastery can be considered in late game, after HAWK Protocol.

### Perimeter Overwatch

This mastery provides 4 elite banshees, which perform very poorly relative to Aquila's mothership. As such this is a completely skippable mastery.

### Wave Breaker

On Oldschool and Hellwalker, Atlas has much more consequential and important masteries to pick from until level 40. After level 40, the fight is mostly outside the base pushing enemy bases. Therefore, there is no place for this mastery on OS and HW difficulties.