The Thrax Legatus Triple-Laser Attack Is Very Annoying

[Koekr]

Commonly, when I open fire or swing at one of these enemies, they instantly do the laser attack, and the fact that my attack gets entirely negated with no warning is annoying.

Then I have to wait for them to finish doing the laser beams, and that takes an annoyingly long time. I used to pull out my operator and attack the spectres, but now I rarely do so, for a bunch of reasons.
Often there are nearby enemies I could be killing instead, and that's more efficient.
I'm not convinced that killing the spectres ends the attack any faster, the difference isn't noticeable enough to me.
Often the spectres just have more health than I can quickly deal with, as most of my encounters with them are in steel path circuit.
And sometimes I just get hit by one of the lasers anyway because I'm not moving around as fast as a warframe.

Speaking of getting hit with the lasers, sometimes I get rather annoyed when I get hit by a laser in a certain way. Maybe circumstances make it difficult to avoid, maybe it comes from offscreen, maybe the travel path of the laser swings around and hits me unexpectedly. Maybe I just got staggered by a different laser, and this second laser is here to twist the knife.

The magnetic proc is also half the reason I put status resistance of some kind on every warframe I plan on using in the circuit.

Even when avoiding the lasers, it's annoying. They continually track your position, so the area they force you out of is annoyingly large.

Once the lasers are finished, then I have to wait a little longer for the little motes to reconverge. If the lasers finish, because there's a persistent bug where sometimes the spectre just keeps on firing their laser until the next circuit round. But if they do finish, then I usually take note where the little motes end up, but this isn't a great indication of where the enemy will be. There's no transition between not existing and existing, and sometimes the enemy just reappears some distance away from where they should be.

[Zakkhar]

4 hours ago, Koekr said:

Then I have to wait for them to finish doing the laser beams, and that takes an annoyingly long time. I used to pull out my operator and attack the spectres, but now I rarely do so, for a bunch of reasons.
Often there are nearby enemies I could be killing instead, and that's more efficient.

If your amp is not on par with rest of your gear it probably is. Solution: Get better amp/operator arcane setup. What do you use atm?

4 hours ago, Koekr said:

I'm not convinced that killing the spectres ends the attack any faster, the difference isn't noticeable enough to me.

It does: Thrax Legatus | WARFRAME Wiki | Fandom

In this form they possess two special abilities:

• They vanish and summon three spectral copies, which will send out a beam that inflicts  Magnetic damage with high status chance. Each copy can be destroyed by Operators to stop its beam.
• They ascend into the air and fire a burst of explosive projectiles, much like Hellions.

Destroying the physical form reverts it into a spectral form that can only be damaged by  Void damage from the Operator's attacks.  Void damage deals 10x damage to the spectral form. Legatus variants that spawn in Duviri do not have a spectral form and are defeated upon killing the physical form.

If near a humanoid enemy, the spectral form will attempt to consume them, reconstituting its physical body. When attempting to consume a humanoid enemy, the spectral form takes 100x damage from  Void.

All of its armor is stripped once it enters its spectral form, and its armor won't be restored even if it manages to reconstitute by consuming an enemy.

4 hours ago, Koekr said:

And sometimes I just get hit by one of the lasers anyway because I'm not moving around as fast as a warframe.

Speaking of getting hit with the lasers, sometimes I get rather annoyed when I get hit by a laser in a certain way. Maybe circumstances make it difficult to avoid, maybe it comes from offscreen, maybe the travel path of the laser swings around and hits me unexpectedly. Maybe I just got staggered by a different laser, and this second laser is here to twist the knife.

The magnetic proc is also half the reason I put status resistance of some kind on every warframe I plan on using in the circuit.

People avoid those? I typically do not bother with any special movement, just face tank em. (General) Status resistance is great because it works as Primed Sure Footed, but Magnetic Resistance arcane is extremly situational are should not be really used outside Eidolon (solo) hunting.

[Koekr]

I think you're missing the point of the post.

It's not that the mechanic can't be ignored, it's that engaging with this attack in any way is annoying, so building to ignore it is what everyone does.

The annoying attack should be replaced with a less annoying attack. There is no justification for an attack being this annoying, especially not 'you can build to ignore it'.

Also, your excerpts from the wiki do not indicate that the attack ends any faster if all of the copies are destroyed, only that a copy stops firing a laser when destroyed. Regardless, in my experience, time spent destroying the copies just isn't worth it in the steel path circuit, even if the attack ended faster.

Edited July 18 by Koekr

[Zakkhar]

32 minutes ago, Koekr said:

The annoying attack should be replaced with a less annoying attack. There is no justification for an attack being this annoying, especially not 'you can build to ignore it'.

This attack is not annoying for me because my amp melts them in split second. 

It is annoying for you, because yours dont. I already offered solution. I can give you advice, if you tell me what your current amp/amp arcane/focus setup is.

33 minutes ago, Koekr said:

Also, your excerpts from the wiki do not indicate that the attack ends any faster if all of the copies are destroyed, only that a copy stops firing a laser when destroyed.

You have to read between lines. It cannot exist in both Spectral and Physical forms at the same time. If it is in Physical form, no Spectral forms can be present. When they are, Physical form is not present. When you destroy Physical form it goes into Spectral one, when you destroy Spectral one it either dies (if it is its final form) or goes back to Physical if it was just ability.

[Hoxard]

Destroying the spectral copies does not end the thrax legatus' laser attack faster. This can be quickly and easily tested in the simulacrum by spawning a level 1 thrax legatus, waiting for him to use his laser attack, and then instantly killing the copies. It will still take several seconds for the legatus to reappear and become vulnerable again. This is because all the legatus himself is doing during that attack is disappearing (and therefore becoming invulnerable) for about 5 seconds. Destroying the copies won't force him to reappear sooner and is actually something you should actively avoid doing because there's a very good chance of bugging out the attack if you're the client in multiplayer. If you've ever seen a permanently invulnerable thrax legatus firing a laser for eternity, that's most frequently caused by destroying the copies.

It's a super buggy attack that breaks more often than it works properly and should really just be deleted for that reason alone. It's not like the legatus needs it to keep up with the centurion anyway since it also has its float and fire rockets attack.

[MobyTheDuck]

This enemy was and still is a massive pain in the butt.

While the Zariman version seems to use the laser attack after getting damaged a bit, doing it slowly and giving up enough time to destroy the specters, the Circuit version seems to do it INSTANTLY, as soon as you look at it and does it super fast.

Not only it can do it from the other side of the map and still hit you due the insane tracking it has, I noticed that it can still trigger while you are invisible and destroying the specters no longer makes it return faster.

[RyllusPurple]

Jump over the laser. Wallhang or aimglide. Legatus cannot shoot upwards. Their tracking is expecting you to move, it gets more aggressive and harder to dodge. The easy way is simply walk around them or roll behind cover.

[N64Gamefreak]

Banshee's Silence prevents this attack from happening (if you have sufficient range), and the ability can be subsumed onto any frame via Helminth.