How can you destroy an Atlas with a rifle within 1 second?

When I was playing ME3 yesterday, I saw something very interesting. One of the players, playing as a turian on Silver, was tearing through all enemies like nothing. Even Atlases and Phantoms only survived at most one second even with activated barrier. He only used his rifle, and one shot seemed to remove about 50 % of the barrier/shield/health.

Even the saber, which is quite strong (but slow), requires around 2 full magazines and several seconds to destroy an atlas.

I certainly wasn't dreaming and tried to find out how he achieved this, but the lobby was closed just when the match ended, so I could not glance at his loadout or further character details. I remember his player name but will not post it here for privacy reasons.

How is this possible? Does this work in a “legal” way?

Solution 1:

I actually contacted the player after the match without expecting an answer, but in fact received a nice explanation:

I have been playing Mass Effect since the first game came out and I have been gaming 30 + years. Know my way around the keyboard and have my mouse plus I can headshot pretty consistently. but other than that I use Level 3 AP and Assault Rifle mods Level 2/3. I have tons of credits, a max manifest so mods are about the only thing to spend money on these days. I also solo quite a bit and know the weak points and strengths of each enemy so all that combined means an advantage over newer players.

Solution 2:

The player you saw defeating an Atlas within a second did not cheat.

On each game of 10 waves you get a max of 5 the Missile Cobra launchers. This is a special weapon used to kill tough enemies, killing any emeny with one hit at any difficulty.

You can equip your character with misile cobra launchers by purchasing item packs. Depending on whether you are playing on Windows, PS or xbox the way to equip the Cobra differs. On windows I think that the shortcut is by default no5 on your keyboard. You can check that on your keyboard settings. I am not sure about the xbox/playstation.

There's a few scenarios where the Cobra is useful. The first is saving teammates from being overrun or sync killed by instantly killing them in one shot. You don't even have to aim, just splash bad guys near their feet and they melt into piles of goo.

You can also use it for killing bumrushing bosses during an objective wave. Since enemies don't stop spawning until an objective is finished, sometimes you need that extra firepower to survive. This is mainly useful on objectives like Hack and Devices where players can't kite away enemies that well due to the static nature of the objective.