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"Plasma is generally bad for lasers"

The plasma is the best part. With plasma you can print current carrying channels into mid-air, with plasma you can transfer electric charges on them. With plasma your mid-air printed coil can put a force on things.

They go on to mention how it's beneficial in this case too...
Yes - for lensing, but not for conducting structure printing.
I assumed (not a laser expert) that the plasma that forms out of the gain media is what is problematic with a typical solid state laser, while in this case, the plasma is the medium.
The plasma at the end of the laser path is usually the best part. Even then, things like laser-plasma instabilities (LPI) can have devastating consequences.
These results come from the National Ignition Facility, the world's biggest ICF experiment.
9 beams combined into a single beam with energy 4 times of a single beam.