Hallow's End 2009 first impressions
by Matthew Rossi 
Oct 18th 2009 at 1:00PM
It's Hallow's End and the Headless Horseman is back. As soon as my wife saw that our server had clicked over to 1 AM, she had me in my tanking finery and a group assembled lickety split for purposes of killing him and trying to get her a mount. A group of five stalwarts (warrior tank, mage, hunter and DK DPS, disc priest healing) fought our way through the trash mobs and soon had the area around the altar clear and ready for summons.
The fight mechanics this year are absolutely unchanged. The gear itself is updated for level 80, and is about the same quality as Naxx-10, heroic epics or non heroic Trial of the Champion. There's a physical DPS ring, a caster DPS ring, and a healing ring that I saw drop as well as a plate DPS helm and a one handed sword that we didn't see once even though we ended up rotating enough alts through to kill him nine times. The Horseman himself doesn't seem to hit very hard at all (I easily healed the fight on my shaman even when the druid tank disconnected) but having your healer get Conflagrate for a group in lesser gear might be pretty nasty.
All in all, it was a fun way to try and get a pony. Sadly, no pony dropped for us, but I know I'll be back for at least five tries a day until the end of the holiday.
The fight mechanics this year are absolutely unchanged. The gear itself is updated for level 80, and is about the same quality as Naxx-10, heroic epics or non heroic Trial of the Champion. There's a physical DPS ring, a caster DPS ring, and a healing ring that I saw drop as well as a plate DPS helm and a one handed sword that we didn't see once even though we ended up rotating enough alts through to kill him nine times. The Horseman himself doesn't seem to hit very hard at all (I easily healed the fight on my shaman even when the druid tank disconnected) but having your healer get Conflagrate for a group in lesser gear might be pretty nasty.
All in all, it was a fun way to try and get a pony. Sadly, no pony dropped for us, but I know I'll be back for at least five tries a day until the end of the holiday.
Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Events, Odds and ends, News items, Instances, Alts, Achievements
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
lagredell Oct 18th 2009 1:12PM
As far as healing goes, 1 Sacred Shield & HoT, along with judgment of light was enough to keep a very, very moderately geared tank topped off on health. I ended up switching over to dps to speed up our kills a bit.
tatsumasa Oct 19th 2009 2:33AM
same for my group, except our tank was well geared. so well geared in fact that after the first fight i switched to my main (dps) spec. no healing was needed at all for the fights. granted it's all ilvl200 gear, but some sort of challenge would be nice. maybe blizz could leave the holiday fights the way they are and add a heroic/hard mode setting for those of us who aren't still in our questing greens and would appreciate a fight and not just a slaughter of the holiday boss.
Dapip Oct 18th 2009 1:12PM
I got my mount today =] Hope you all get yours soon too!
Monica Dickey Oct 18th 2009 4:19PM
Soon soon... It's kinda sad how much I love crazy mounts haha they don't really actually do much for me.
ticklesme Oct 18th 2009 9:25PM
This is my first time attending holidays to celebrate my 1 year anniversary in Wow.
What a gift! I got my mount, pet, helm and after a quick trip around Azeroth, got my Achievement!
Deadly. Off. Topic. Oct 19th 2009 10:05AM
Sadly, my party tried 21 times last night (6 tries from my friend and her fiancee, and 15 from me and mine) and the horse did not drop.
I did see the sword drop, once. The real sad thing here is that the person who got it last year, got it again on the same alt. (You'd think someone would give someone else a chance at the pumpkin soldiers...but sigh, this is the same person is only too happy to use our summons, but once she gets all she can out of the instance tries to weasel out of coming back. :( )
Rexton Oct 18th 2009 1:13PM
Would be nice to be able to get on and do it. When I try to get onto my 80's, I'm stuck with DC's and my alts all have about 2-4.5k latency for ten minutes before getting DC'd. Although I heard someone in my guild was able to summon him ten times in one group.
crispsnotchips Oct 18th 2009 1:16PM
Some friends and I waited around to 1 Am doing BG's, waiting for the event to start. We had 6 attempts (didn't bring in all of our alts, could have had upwards of 10), and in all had one magic broom, one squashling, and the rest were rings.
The "fight" is perhaps to easy to heal actually. Tank didn't require any healing outside of my holy priests PW:S and Renew, so I'd toss some DoTs and just relax.
Charneldeath Oct 18th 2009 1:21PM
I think the fight is way undertuned. He just flat out melts, its not even funny.
Valt Oct 18th 2009 1:28PM
Newsflash: Its WORLD EVENT boss not raid boss or heroic boss. Its tuned for guest greens not T9. So yeah, ofc its easy or undertuned.
MrMindless Oct 18th 2009 1:29PM
I think he's perfectly tuned for the instance he's in
that being sm gy
Jamesisgreat Oct 18th 2009 2:01PM
I heard that he's soloable - anyone tried? What sort of level of gear do you need? Not that theres much point soloing him now of course - your better off having 5 summons in a group instead of one, but towards the end of Hallows End it may be handy...
Neirin Oct 18th 2009 3:32PM
My blood DK tank friend solo'd him in mostly HToC10 gear. He said the trick was to not get more than 2-3 conflagrations per phase, since those account for a huge amount of damage (since they disorient you can't avoid blows either).
Charneldeath Oct 18th 2009 4:06PM
I'm going to solo him tonight as Ret. He hits for FAR less then Chillmaw does, and soloing him is a cakewalk. I'll let you know how it goes.
xenothaulus Oct 18th 2009 1:34PM
I've seen the mount this year, so that's something. Rolled a damn 6, but still! And I've seen the squashling and hallowed helm already too (have them from last year) so it feels like maybe they've tweaked the drop rate. Last year I did it every single day, sometimes with alts, and never saw the mount drop once. I have a good feeling about this year.
Furlover Oct 18th 2009 1:41PM
If current drop rates are anything to go by (25 runs so far), I won't be getting the squashling / helm achievement this year either :(
Jamesisgreat Oct 18th 2009 1:59PM
I think you can get both from trick or treat bags - you can do that every hour so that really helps your chances.
Laynne Oct 18th 2009 2:03PM
Don't get discouraged :). I've been in there once so I killed him 5 times, and I've seen the helm drop once and the pet twice. I don't need either, so others in my group were happy...unfortunately, no dps ring for me :(
Hal Oct 18th 2009 2:23PM
The good news on the helm is that, once you have credit in the achievement, you can pass it on to party members who need it. So, if you get the roll, don't be greedy!
Haro Oct 19th 2009 4:28AM
@Hal:
I tried to do this yesterday; i won the roll but when i passed it on, the achievement only worked for me. So maybe the achievement is for winning the roll on the hat, not for holding the hat in your inventory.