The Heretic

Boss Portrait
Base HP	789
Base HP	789
Stage HP	0
Stage HP	0
Ingame Appearance
Entity ID	905.0
Found In	Boss
Dropped Items	Boss

The Heretic is a boss added in The Binding of Isaac: Repentance that can appear in Mausoleum.

Behavior

Phase 1

• During the beginning of the fight, 5 Exorcists, which are shielded and invulnerable, summon The Heretic from a large pentagram after which they turn into Fanatics.
  • The Heretic is incorporeal until all Fanatics and the Pacers or Gushers they turn into are dead, similar to The Haunt's first phase.
  • While incorporeal The Heretic can still do contact damage.

Phase 2

• Lobs 7 projectiles that, after landing, burst into 6 fires that spread out in a radial pattern. The landing position of each projectile is marked on the ground.
  • The Heretic then follows up by launching itself towards Isaac creating a radial burst of 8 lines of fire where it lands. It spends a short time readjusting its dislocated jaw before continuing to attack.
• The arena of the Heretic always spawns a number of unlit Fire Places. The Heretic can light up 5-6 of them before firing a Brimstone laser that connects all of the lit fires. The order the Heretic lights each fire indicates what order the laser travels.
  • These can be extinguished with an explosion, preventing Brimstone lasers from reaching the deactivated Fire Place.
• Dashes off-screen and turns invisible before charging in again, predicting Isaac's movements and attempting to bite down on where Isaac is moving, doing a full heart of damage if the attack connects. It chains this attack a total of 4 times, each time from alternating sides of the room.
  • The Heretic occasionally does not finish the fourth charge, instead fading away and quickly charging in one final time from the other side of the screen.
• Upon death, the Heretic's fiery eye drops down and sends out lines of fire in the cardinal directions.

Gallery

• 

  The Heretic in-game.

• 

  The Heretic performing its Brimstone attack.

Notes

• When not fought as a main boss such as in a Boss Challenge room or a degraded boss, it will not be preceded by Fanatics and have no first phase.
  • The Heretic also cannot perform its Brimstone attack outside of its regular boss room as there will be no unlit Fire Places.

Trivia

• The Heretic originates from a Reddit post by NotYourSaggitarius in 2015, as a versus screen mockup. The boss was later incorporated into the Antibirth mod.
• It appears to be a resurrected variation of The Haunt or The Forsaken.
• The only time The Heretic's empty right eye lights up is during its Brimstone attack.
• The Exorcists that appear during the beginning of the fight to summon The Heretic are found nowhere else in Mausoleum, unlike in Antibirth where they were a regularly appearing Monster.
  • As of Repentance version 4.0.3, the Exorcists exist in the bestiary, but even using a Chaos Card to kill them will not add them to the bestiary, leaving it currently impossible to complete.

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