I've had enough of the Atlas

or how I stopped worrying and sold the Atlas.

A few days ago I bought the Atlas AS7-D-DC.
I put an AC/20 and 3 SRM6's on it. As well as some lasers.
They told me it was a brawling build, so I had to patiently stand behind cover until things get close and personal. Then I was supposed to engage and obliterate enemy mechs left and right while taking outstanding amounts of damage.

In theory, it looked great. But in the actual game it sucked ass.

The only assault I'd played consistently at that time was the Warhawk with the 2 LL's, 3 MLs and a Gauss. It wrecked ass at long range, medium range and short range. It could tank enough damage to get me trough the match with my aggressive style of play.

So, if THAT is tanky, I thought, the Atlas is gonna be absolutely indestructible!
How wrong I was.

In reality, the atlas proved to be far more fragile than the lightest of mechs.

As I found out, it was due to its enormous size (and huge hitboxes) and its incredibly slow speed of 48km/h.

Why the Atlas is the absolute worst mech in my opinion:
1. You have to stand for a long time behind cover before you can engage. You're an assault, you're supposed to spearhead the offence. Instead, you don't participate until later in the game.

And if your team has lost the long range/mid range phase of the battle, there's nothing you can do, once you get surrounded by enemy mechs.

2. Huge size means huge side torsos and generally body parts. Extremely easy to hit.  And this, combined with 3, leads to some horrible survivability:

3. Extremely slow speed
Huge hitboxes + slow speed = walking coffin.
As I found out, speed is extremely important not only for midrange, but also for short range engagements. Speed is what lets you quickly hide behind cover if things get ugly, reposition and strike at the enemy. Speed is what lets you chase an enemy, kill them and return back to safety.

4. You can't just put on a couple of large lasers and snipe while you wait for the brawling phase. Your towering body will be spotted and shot at long before you can get you arms above the hill in oder to shoot. Corner peaking is also not an option with a torso as huge as the atlas'. A LRM launcher won't cut it too, since it cripples your alpha damage.

I am not the most experienced player, (I am actually a noob!), yet with the Warhawk Im easily doing 500-900 damage in a lot of my matches, for example. And I usually manage to kill 1 or 2 guys.

P.S.

The same can be said about the Ebon Jaguar vs Marauder.
Fitted with the same weapons as the EBJ (2 LL, 2ML, 1 Gauss) the MAD is able to do far less dmg and dies faster.

In the world of heavy mechs and assaults, it seems, speed is king. Not tankiness or firepower.

Your thoughts, gentlemen? I personally am sick of googling about atlas and reading how good it is. It's simply not the case.