Hallow's End 2009 first impressions

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.