IDK what that is supposed to imply. Since the Seanchan tend to be more on the ball about stuff than other cultures, are you suggesting they make systematic use of it, as they do with so many other oddities they encounter, even over the course of the series, from forkroot to Min?
Just that the fact that they might be enslaving two sapient races, particularly two they can't actually communicate with likely wouldn't phase them much.
A fireball is maintained by a weave. While lightning is simply made and directed.
The fact that balefire disperses after passing the edge would mean that it needs the weave to continue, much as fire would. But... Rather little the OP does is of the OP. The closest it really gets to that is direct effects of the weave. Not the fire itself, but the initial ignition.
So really, the real question is whether or not the balefire is simply the effect of the weave, or a thing made and maintained by the weave.
I'd lean towards it being a thing, but not sure the text is evidence enough.
Going back to fireballs and lightning... Being untouchable to weaves isn't THAT good a thing to be. Useful as a surprise to have up you sleeve, but it only really protects you from weave like fireballs or flows of air which involve the weave actually touching the target, and even then... Wouldn't be all that hard for a channeler to simply cook the thing in the center of flows of fire, they simply have to avoid touching it with the threads, or just use Deathgates. Unless it touched it on the outside of the gate, the loss of weave would just cause the gateway to close. Or just use lightning. Lots of lightning. One of the favored battle weaves of channelers, and it's immunity to the OP wouldn't mean anything, just ask Mat. Hell, just take a page out of BS's book and forget the hardened air in favor of just plain old wind. Throw the thing around like a rag doll with no need for the weaves to actually touch it.
Don't get me wrong, the things do work as assassins. It's just that they were painted as these nigh unkillable beast, that even the Forsaken had big issues with handling... When we have SEEN that the Forsaken do know how to counter people with ter'angreal that do much the same thing.
Pull an Androl and open gateways from volcanoes high above the city and let the lava pour on in, or fro the bottom of the ocean and drink the place. The Guardian may stop weaves, but that can and has been worked around by the more clever channelers.
Gholam aren't that much different, although they don't seem to actually die at all. The one Mat and Sumeko dealt with went right in through a gateway without dying and it's possible if someone wanted to find it they theoretically could by opening another gateway. Compared to all the other Shadowspawn the Gholam was pretty formidable. Although like all the other shadowspawn they became less impressive over time. Remember when a handful of Trollocs and ONE Fade were trouble for Moiraine and Lan? They even thought "only the weakest AS" would have trouble with a Fade which mean Daigian might not be able to manage a single Fade, which I think is fairly obviously not true. A single weak AS could manage to kill a fair number of Halfmen before being overcome. But a gholam? It would almost certainly kill any channeler without the strength to create a gateway or the wits to figure out a plan pretty damn quick.
Mind, it's like a Fade in that it doesn't die right away, and indeed if body parts get hacked off they not only continue to thrash around, but can be reattached.
Indeed it says that generally was hacked to pieces and the pieces burned to ash... "Hacked to pieces" with a being immune to the OP almost certainly meaning by a human with a sword...
Pretty much any channeler strong enough to wrap a human up in Air(not puck up mind, just wrap up) can deal with a Fade just that easily. There isn't anything a Fade can do about it unless it just so happens to be at the edge of a shadow at the time.
As far as ANY channeler Vs a gholam... Well, for one there is lightning, or just large explosions for that matter. Said weak channeler would be screwed, and Third Agers would need to get very lucky as they don't know what they're dealing with... But it wasn't made to kill Third Agers. It was made to kill AS in the WoP, were those ter'angreal were a known thing.
It doesn't even really need much of a "plan" so much as just the awareness not to touch it with the weaves. A little breathing room would also be helpful... Hence why they are assassins. The idea is NOT to let the target know what it is ahead of time.
All that is fine and good... I suppose what has me "-_-" is that we're told about how one of these things almost took out a Forsaken, and how it had never even been hurt before... Like I said, seems over hyped given that it's not really all that hard to kill.
In open combat, they are somewhat better then just giving a Fade one of those ter'angreal.
Look how hard it was to even land a blow on the creature. Mat, by all measure one of the best fighters in the series, barely survived encounters with the creature and he had the Ashanderi and the medallion to keep it a far enough distance from him that he survived. It feels no pain (at least from conventional wounds), can slip itself through tiny spaces and moves much quicker than a man. A formidable hand to hand enemy to have to face. For AOL AS this may have actually been a very difficult opponent as they were not all warriors with swords either and it's kind of hard to toss lighting strikes at something that's inside of 50 paces and not harm yourself in the process. Certainly there are many rather simple solutions, open a gateway beneath its feet and drop it in a volcano, turn the ground beneath its feet to quicksand or something then flash harden it so it's trapped. Throw razor sharp objects at it ... it's certainly possible. But of all the shadowspawn we've seen these would appear to be the most formidable with the possible exception of a Darkhound and maybe Jumara/Worms although I don't know that we know enough of these creatures to be sure.
IMO the Gholam were the only shadowspawn with any real chance to kill even a low-level channeler (a trained one anyway) on its own.
