Wish I had a way to just merge this thread into the other one. At this point each is roughly the same length, but the comment I made in the other is exactly an answer to your question:
The article didn’t discuss specifics, so still no idea exactly how far they move to defocus. But reducing power and/or increasing speed and doing a few passes could work as well. Since what they do for a healing cut is make a small cut off to the side, then heat the free standing segment so that it bridges across the two cuts.