Knives of Artemis

I had such good luck with my post on Nemesis I thought I'd try again. I'm curious about the Kives of Artemis. How in the world do people fight these guys? I have a Kat/SR and I realize that's part of my problem with the "auto-hit" caltrops draining my health and preventing me from using Aid Self. However, even getting past that and changing strategies a little (I find the "jump in the middle" approach to be bad against these guys), what about the sloooooooow effects? I spent over three hours on a mission with these guys. I finally dropped the mission because I was bored to tears. Does anyone actually like fighting these guys? Is there some strategy I'm missing that can "speed up" killing them?

Actually /SR is well equipped to deal with their slows as Quickness offers 40% slow resistance. That's pretty sweet. Do you have Quickness?

Other thoughts:

Slot the slow resist IO from Winters Gift
Use your origin temp power to bunch them around a corner
Make liberal use of your fly pack, if you don't have hover or fly. I think trops don't affect flyers at all.

KoA are so different that I think they freak people out more than the actual threat they pose. In reality, they're mostly throwing low damaging shuriken at you. The VERY notable exception is bosses that can crit on headsplitters and kill you with a quickness.

If you think this enemy group is tough on your Scrapper, give 'em a shot with a MM. My pride keeps me from ever dropping a mission for being too difficult, but their trops cause henchmen to be unmanagable, so I do tend to drop KoA missions I'm soloing with my MM.

I appreciate the replies. I think next time (if there is one) I'll have to team with a blaster, seems like my best option. Also, as a side note, I do have quickness but it does next to nothing. I'm guessing that's because I'm running x8 and there's just too much -speed for 40% res to do anything.

Good Lord, KoA at x8? If I'd known that I would have given much simpler advice - swallow your pride for a mission and go see the Field Analyst and switch to 0/1.

How do I fight them? I fight them with my own Knives of Artemis character!



They get a taste of their own medicine with their stupid Caltrops!

Seriously though, I have no special tactic against them other than using Ninja Run + Sprint to get out of the Caltrops and the occasional use of the Nemesis Staff and Blackwand.

My first character, a claws/SR, "What is all the fuss about? Mez, they do that? The trops are vaguely annoying. *resumes hovering/sprinting around like crazy person launching Shockwave and Focus*

Second scrapper, a Broadsword/Regen, "Ouch that tickles, when I catch you! ... ", *resumes sprinting at the -spd floor thru stacks of caltrops" (oh the days of toggle IH)

My first defender, an Emp/Dark "grrrr mezzed yet again, for the next century!" *pops one of tray full of breakfree and tries to fly higher only to discover the meaning of stacked webnades*

Swallow your pride and reduce difficulty. KoA aren't actually that dangerous, just annoying as heck. Reduce the spawn size at the least, so you'll be annoyed for a shorter time. It also reduces the amount of stacked caltrops effects you'll suffer, reducing how much annoyment you'll suffer at any one time.

I wish I had the answer for how to handle them easily, but I hate crowds of Knives of Artemis too. Mainly because it's no fun being unable to move, not because they're overly dangerous. I just hate standing there doing a bunch of nothing. Mind you, I don't have Aid Self. I took Dark Melee with my Super Reflexes because I'd rather have a chance of missing than a chance of being interrupted. Caltrops is one reason.

My solution is to not take missions with them in it, and if I still find myself in one, I'd probably lower the spawn to +?x1 now that that's available. I can't even remember the last time I fought them.

This is where I love my teleporting scrapper. The Knives drop a half-dozen Caltrops spills and as the team struggles to get free, I *blink* out of the slow spot right into those hard to reach mercenaries, usually with an Eagle's Claw to the skull. (And Quickness helps too!)

*taps microphone*... ahem... I'd like to field this question...

Ok.. as an /SR you can run across a single patch of caltrops at practically full speed with no issue. It's the stacked patches that actually slow you down. If you play with their AI a bit you can learn to anticipate when they'll throw the trops down. If you agro a spawn from outside of caltrops they'll run toward you a little bit before throwing the trops. As soon as you see one start to throw trops you move off the patch before it gets stacked up (they don't all get within range at once if you make them come to you) ... a few more will come in range, so then you move again. Everytime you see trops thrown, you move off the patch. Before long you'll have the rythem and distance down and can do it almost second nature. The real trick is to keep moving so that they have to moving as well.

It's easier to do in a wide open outdoor maps, but from my expirience thats where KoA tend to be. (this also works for Chimera's minions)

Knives are like Chimera's ninjas. They are polite enough to saunter into melee one by one, so you always have something to fight even if you're moving in slow motion. If the caltrop pile gets too annoying, or too dangerous to my /SR (if you aggro multiple x8 spawns that's a lot of little autohit ticks, plus whatever normal attacks the RNG lets through) I'll Raptor Pack off it.

I'm with the people here who say they're just frustrating. If I play my Kat/Inv they don't really pose a threat because of soft capped Lethal Def along with ~65% S/L Res. I can basically stand in a field of caltrops and my regeneration will still see me through it, but I can't plow through the missions, not because of endurance or health constraints, but because of those darn caltrops that slow me down.

I haven't tried them properly (i.e. at x/6 or higher) solo on either of my SR characters, but I would imagine it to be a pain because of caltrops being autohit. I'll give it a shot on my Elec/SD, though, if just for the xp!

Hmmm,thats odd,i never had issues fighting them,and i fought them with my FA/SS Tanker.I had very few issues jumping in,and kicking the holy *BLEEP* out of them,and moving on to the next mob.

KoA are one of the more annoying groups in the game, not only because of the caltrops, but also because there is no badge associated with them. I never lower my settings, because I usually forget to do it until after I get in the mission, so I know the pain of +8 KoA spawns.

Generally my tactics on my DM/SR is to simply kill everything in sight as quickly as possible and use Siphon Life when needed. But you only have the pool heal, I'd suggest you slot some interrupts in it, if not do what others suggest and just turn down the difficulty.

Good luck.