Conquerors of the Atlas-Good or bad for the game?

The new atlas is overall quite good, but wading into initial progress is burdensome and sirus himself is a horribly designed fight gated behind a very, very boring grind.

I'd quit this league already if it wasn't for the atlas changes. I love it - it's much more interesting to progress now and the conquerors are pretty cool (except Sirus maybe).
The old was "meh" in comparison, I've never really liked the Shaper-Elder influence mechanic all that much.

They are much much better than the old atlas for the simple fact that I don't have to predict where the influence would move.

The concept was "ok" on release but if you're going to replace the path to uber elder, it should be with something better not worse.

They seem to forget the keep tacking more on that needs to be "reground" every league, recipes, atlas, characters, etc. You've got to make doing it all over again appealing.

But more than anything, the sirus fight is the biggest issue that came out of the change.