Same Atlas, Multiple Characters?

So before Affliction I hadn't played POE in a while, before the atlas passive system was released. When I rolled my 2nd char of the season I was really surprised to see that I didn't have to redo the atlas upon reaching maps, I had the same atlas as my first character.

This topic has probably been hashed and rehashed now many times but..I want to make a new character that focuses on doing some of the in-game activities that my current character may not be the best at. Except I will have the same atlas as that character, which means respeccing. I have the currency to do the respec, but that also means that my current character will "lose" its atlas specializations and I would have to respec again if I wanted to go back to this character.

Not sure if Im explaining myself well, but basically I find it really strange that you share 1 atlas between all your characters. More than strange, its pretty inconvenient if I want to have different characters that are good at different things.

Is there a way to not share atlases between characters?

It's silly, but unfortunately no, the Atlas passives are shared across all characters in a league.

I guess you could make your new character in a different league (eg. Affliction SSF or Affliction HC rather than Affliction), but that's about all you can do.

I'm guessing you want a character for mapping, one for uber boss farming. For now, the only option is to respec your atlas when you want to change strategy. Fortunately, this league you get plenty of orbs of regret/unmaking from mapping, but still need to spend a bit of time to move the points.