Defeat freaks, find any item

[NihilXAOS]

I know this one is as ancient as the winds, but:

 

In the mission "Defeat Freaks, Save Any Item" (called "Stop The Destruction" I think) given by Wilma Peterson. 

On all three of the items I'm supposed to save there's a Freakshow IN the item. He can't be targeted, and can attack the item. Sometimes they pop out on their own. Sometimes they destroy it and the objective fails. Is there no way to fix that? I know the mission requirements loosened up in the way back when because that mission was more or less a complete failure no matter what, but it still isn't working right.

[srmalloy]

The only way I've found is to toss an AoE at one of the other Freaks at the object, and then run away (preferably around a nearby corner to break LoS) to get them to come after me; that generally gets them to pop out of the object.

 

What annoys me about that mission, though, is that the map is generally linear enough, with the 'ambush' spawns starting from the front of the mission, so that I will clear the mobs around the first item, defeat the spawning attackers, then move to the second, defeat the mobs around it, and have the attackers that spawn for the second item come running down the map, find the first item, and destroy it, then don't go any further. This gets repeated for the third item, so even though I get credit for 'saving' the first and second items, they get destroyed by the mobs that show up to destroy the 'next' item. If each of the items to be protected despawned after you 'save' it, the mission would flow better.