You’re better off buying it if you really want the helmet. I struggled to keep top 10% without the pass, found out there was a 15% score boost attached to it, bought it and now am top 10% in four of them pretty easily. With how on the edge I was on 10% without the pass, getting occasionally knocked out of that threshold below 100 points, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bungie formulated the event this way to force people to buy the pass.