I feel buck to be a pretty balanced floor 1 boss, imo he's the easiest of the floor 1 bosses in the original game. With base isaac stats you just have to make sure to beat the adds and he's basically a push over. I feel like Meltdown's phase 2 can go on for a bit too long with the raining bullets but besides that he's pretty standard for the rest of the floor 1 bosses. The only floor 1 boss I would say is overtuned is Honey Drop

Originally posted by Special Thanks, You:

I feel buck to be a pretty balanced floor 1 boss, imo he's the easiest of the floor 1 bosses in the original game. With base isaac stats you just have to make sure to beat the adds and he's basically a push over. I feel like Meltdown's phase 2 can go on for a bit too long with the raining bullets but besides that he's pretty standard for the rest of the floor 1 bosses. The only floor 1 boss I would say is overtuned is Honey Drop

Buck litters the room with enemies, explosives, and constant streams of projectiles. He is only somewhat balanced by not having much health. The issue with Meltdown is that he overlays two different, complete attack patterns at once, which is too complex for a floor 1 boss. I’d argue that he’s between War and Death in terms of difficulty, which are chapter 3 and 4 bosses. Just compare Meltdown to Famine and you’ll see what I mean.

Honeydrop feels balanced to me. Has fairly easy to dodge attacks, and while it overlays two attack patterns in phase 2 like Meltdown, both attacks are very simple to avoid (a single bouncing stinger and Honeydrop lazily following you with poor accuracy). The fight is also balanced by Honeydrop not doing anything for a while when phase 2 starts, letting you get a lot of damage in before it gets more hectic. I can sometimes even kill it before it starts moving around in phase 2. I’d argue that Honeydrop is similar to the Haunt in difficulty. One of the harder chapter 1 bosses, but doesn’t quite make the cut for chapter 2.

Buck at most spawns 2 very easy and low maintenance enemies and has an incredibly easy shooting pattern that you can often time interrupt too if you want to get ballsy. Honeydrop most definitely spews more enemies than Buck. Bucks explosives are also very similar to other chapter 1 bosses. Phase 2 honeydrop is definitely easier, but the enemy spam doesn't stop in that phase. And Honeydrop not doing anything at the start is because she spawns even more enemies. As for Meltdown, I don't know what you're referring to here. His phase two? The nuke is predicitable and easy to dodge and the waste falling from the sky is spread out enough to a point where the attacks are designed to work together.

1st floor Isaac seems particularly unbalanced even in base game. Compare Pin and Larry Jr. to Baby Plum and Haunt. I wouldn't mind seeing a mod that tries to make the boss difficulty of particular chapters more consistent.

i think that most bosses in the mod can be considered balanced. Meltdown's attacks have crazy long telegraphs, Buck mostly *looks* chaotic but has easy patterns once you learn them, Honeydrop admittedly does spawn lots of enemies but has simple patterns, griddle horn can't do much more than area denial, buster is like buck in that his fight looks chaotic but once the telegraphs are learned they're easily avoidable, etc.

i would say that chapter 1 basegame fights are much worse, ranging from trivial to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with very little inbetween. Baby plum is perhaps the most balanced basegame chapter 1 boss, being a difficult boss that is very learnable due to only having 3 attacks, which is a much better method than creating a boss that will hit the player out of nowhere or not at all.

If a fiend folio boss hits you out of nowhere, then it's not intentional and should be reported, but there are hardly any cases of this. simply play the game, learn the attacks, and you'll do fine