I think part of the discrepancy between the two viewpoints here is that a large number of posters did their atma farming when it was released, you had 10-20 people minimum per FATE. FATEs didn't last long, you got gold and moved on in about 20 secs per FATE. Now it's not the hip new thing, you're more likely to be solo'ing FATEs which takes 5 mins or so depending on FATE.

Also, the JP method. It may be a placebo, but it worked for me.

Took me about 2 weeks of 4 hours a day FATE farming for my first set of Atma. Took me a week doing less per day for my second set using the JP method, and this was several months after Atma was released, so FATEs took longer.