I've heard they don't disappear by rank 1200 so they're basically around forever

You can at best 7 shot them, practically 8 shots tho due to RNG. That's with a massive attack like Noc.

At lvl 450 with 8k buffed attack + shockpulse I can 7 shot them reliably. Good xp and bonus research.

Yeah, I always 7-shot them, sometimes 6.

I don't know what game you guys are playing but with 11k+ attack (buffed) I don't see any of them dieing in less than 9 hits. Maybe there was a lucky one in 8 in there somewhere. More, they have 6200 hp and they are rank 400. The maximum damage you can do to them is 1k. I really want to see a 1000+ hit FerrusManus. I really do. Since you kill them in 6 hits "sometimes".

It takes me 12-16 with 7300 attack. You get diminishing returns tho with the way the combat works, so doubling attack does not mean you do double damage, so most likely it's at least 20k-something attack or more to consistently reach the min shots. Now, if you are talking about the regular hawk... that's a diff NPC.

I thought we were talking about Data Analyzers. O_o

The Flamehawks take me nine or ten.