Stage 7 is done, but I'm not gonna post it just yet. I'm most of the way through Stage 8, but Balder is being a pain. Ornah wasn't much to write home about though, once you know his pattern.
His body is the main target- once that is dead, Balder is beat. However, it regenerates to max health every so often, and for the life of me I cannot figure a way to do enough damage (65535 HP) in time. So, in order to stop that I need to beat all his other parts, but only in a set order. First off, the right cannon and the head need to be beat before the other parts are vunerable, and the head is not easy to reach, requiring me to stand at a distance, fire normal Thunder attack and manipulate Dragon Frye attacks to hit it (Boomerang Lizard can also be used, but it won't do as much damage, even though it is easier to manipulate). Rolling Thunder gets 3 frames damage at most, so it is faster to attack with normal Thunder.
Once the head and cannon are beat, Balder flies to the right side of the stage. Now the rest of his parts are vunerable, the left cannon and two legs have low health, and this just leaves the body itself. I'm not sure if all three remaining parts here have to be beat before the regeneration stops, but thankfully I can beat these parts a lot faster because I can actually reach them with Rolling Thunder.
I'm going away for a couple of days, but once I'm back I can finish this pain in the rear off and finally call this done. Stay tuned!
EDIT: So I've been working on this the past few days now, and I've come to discover the true nature of this abomination known as Balder. Not only does he look like a Lovecraftian wet dream as it is, he's also a glutton for punishment.
There are six distinct parts, the right arm cannon, and the head, both of which must be destroyed before the rest of the parts are vunerable. Then there is the left arm, both legs and the heart. The body is also a target, but it regenerates constantly and bringing it to below 0 health doesn't kill Balder or impair him in any way.
The way to kill him is to destroy the heart, no less than 25 times. Yes you read that right. The heart itself has a mere 256 health, which can be killed in one frame of L8 Rolling Thunder, 15 frames of normal Thunder, 6 frames of Boomerang Lizard's attack, and 1 frame of Dragon Frye's attack (3 frames of Ball-Of-Fire too, but I won't be using it here). 32 frames after the heart dies, it regenerates to full health, and then I need to kill it again.
This makes optimising this fight a huge pain. Not only is Balder constantly moving, which makes him hard to hit on every frame (using normal attack sometimes hits the body, and there are the feathers that fall off that take a few frames of attack to beat), you can't stay in the optimal position for long without taking a heavy beating from his attacks, and the summons fare even worse.
Thankfully, I do have a saving grace - I don't need to destroy the other parts besides the heart once the head and cannon is destroyed, but it would be a good idea to get the left arm and left leg out the way ASAP so it doesn't distract my regular attack. Boomerang Lizard has the fastest recharge and doesn't need incredibly careful positioning unlike Dragon Frye (but it still needs to be placed in a somewhat optimal position to be effective), so for this phase of the fight BL will be my summon of choice. I might have to use Dragon Frye to get rid of the left arm and leg though, which it can do in the second shot easily, but I'm having trouble positioning so the first shot can destroy all 3 parts (or at least the arm, since that is out of reach and has relatively high health).
I know what I'm doing now, all I have to do now is do it.
