I tried FOOK. It added [Infinity] pieces of crap and so forth, IIRC, and I was not happy with it. I don't even remember it rebalancing anything, the only thing I noticed was new stuff that I didn't want, and it being incompatible with many of the other mods I was using. If you're going to rebalance the weapons, or fix bugs, you should just do that, not add a bunch of new things at the same time.
Also FWE, the result of which was me spawning in the upper-left corner of the map, wandering the wasteland trying to get anywhere, unable to heal my injuries properly, until every body part had been broken, and were it possible, I would have broken every body part three times over. That was... completely NOT FUN. I eventually arrived in megaton, only to find that I could not buy the supplies I would need to fix any of my broken body parts. I think that's about when I uninstalled FWE and deleted those saved games.
I did use a bunch of other mods, however, including BLTC. Some of them made things easier, though: One toned down the Fake Difficulty computer hacking, another made it possible to repair weapons with the more common junk that you kept picking up (cans, scrap metal, and such). I also used WMK, Sensible Dismemberment, EVE, CRAFT, and some stuff to improve GNR, and expand the playlist (I actually LIKED (most of) the music, and wanted more of it so the radio station wasn't always looping the same dozen or so songs).