Knives of artemis

So I am finally trying another mastermind (zombies/dark) since my 1st around the time COV came out. I ran into my first KOA mission at +4/+1 and got completely hosed as my pets completely refused to do anything useful if there were caltrops on the ground.
Is there a strategy I can use against this group besides visiting the fateweaver or picking up group fly? Longbow are challenging but beatable if I plan and pay attention, KOA just seem to walk all over me no matter what

due to how the AI works, even group fly wouldnt be helpful

all pets are coded to try to avoid dmg patches and the caltrop happy KoA just exponentiate the problem, its even worse than demolitionists from the scrapyarders group

as you mentioned adjusting the difficulty is about the only thing you can really do

Ouch..if you are Necro, try to stay away from Knives! Undead pets have no lethal resistance so those caltrops actually do decent dot damage on your pets! Exploding throwing stars from Knives' boss can probably kill most of your pets in one hit.

It's tough for sure. Your pets will still cycle some attacks while running back and forth. This is one of the reasons why I usually take one or two attacks as Necro (dark blast and gloom are both good and now that life drain is a lot better too!). In situations where my pets are unreliable, I gotta get my own hands dirty!

thanks for the replies. I've been leaning pretty heavily on my blackwand and sands of mu - i keep meaning to pick up gloom but there always seems to be something else i want...

im just getting into range of ancillary power pools now - is there any that really shine with necro? i really want to pick up leviathan for the vomiting power but it seems like soul, mu and field are a little better.

you can use whatever you feel comfortable using, or want to use for conceptual reasons

personally my main has fire mastery APP i use the fire blast and fireball a lot

on my mains primary build (his old build if you will), he has 2 ranged attacks from ninja primary and 3 attacks from mu mastery PPP

I'm not sure of the recycle time on their caltrops, but you might consider some strategy: move the fight.

Anchor the pets on passive where you want the fight to take place, then run up and agro the target Knives group. Make sure they drop their trops at that point. Then run back (preferably breaking line of sight) and wait for them to come.

Not every problem is a nail.

Team Teleport.

I a lot of ways (ie. power picks) this is no better than reaching for Group Fly, but at the same time it does give you a way to enforceably remove your Pets from Caltrop Zones in a way that may not happen with Group Fly (especially in Low Ceiling maps). So it's not the *best* solution, by any means, it is at least *a* solution you might want to consider.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Make a team for KOA missions. Temp pets work well as caltrop targets as well.

I don't think Group Fly would help, since I notice caltrops seem to have a pretty ridiculously high reach on other characters with Hover. Its just a rough thing you have to deal with with zombies :/ (Although flying zombies would amuse me.)
Yeah the best advice I can give is to make them drop and then pull the fight around the corner, but I know they do tend to drop more before the fight is done. My zombies just pretty much hate any kind of damage patches. Such is not being one of the best pet sets.

I went with Soul on my Necro/Poison largely because I thought Soul was really pretty. It was my first lvl 50 so pretty and more or less useful kinda won out over other considerations. I don't know that any of the PP sets are *highly* useful anyway.