Atma feels much better in this version.

Maybe it's a placebo but it feels like Atma spams meteo less than it did in the previous version (maybe I was just unlucky, but the last time I played the game it seemed like it was using it constantly).

Since meteo's very random properties feels like it can whiff entirely or devastate your team, I prefer it better that way That mostly just leaves the rest of the fight as a contest of keeping ahead of Atma's constant re-buffing itself and its applications of slow, sap, and whatever status Mind Blast feels like applying. Mind Blast is another bothersome one but you can at least protect against the worst statuses it applies. I actually wound up having to use a couple of the elixirs I'd been hoarding throughout the WoB, so nicely done there.

Question though, is Atma programmed to specifically use Rasp on Terra? It did that twice, both times specifically on her.

I do have to wonder if just rasping Atma to death would be easier in the end?

I can't be sure whether you were unlucky in the previous version, lucky in the current version, or perhaps a combination of both, but Atma's script has been essentially untouched between 1.9 and 2.0. And the infinitesimal edits that *were* made were wholly unrelated to the attacks that it uses on you.

Atma's not programmed to target Terra with Rasp: that's a reasonably expensive clause to put in a script in a circumstance where Terra isn't even necessarily going to be there. It just happened to be the case that it targeted the same character twice in a row.

Rasping Atma to death is surely not easier. Among other things, Atma no longer dies at 0 MP, because Atma is not undead, and so, it would be against the current design decisions to allow it to die at 0 MP.