A Newb's guide to gear choices

[Eggplant]

I'm not on the forum much. People know that. I only have a level 12 Monk, but I hope this guide helps out lower level monks.

What gear should I use? Okay, so you're a Monk. Not very descriptive. What type? Let's say you use Dexterity and the Wind Stances for attack speed. Now we're getting somewhere. There are several types of effects on weapons good for attack speed builds. One's Paralyzing Wraps. Chances are they'll roll a natural 1 on their save some time soon after you start attacking, and even if they don't, it's will based and GREAT for paralyzing hordes of melees. Another choice is Stunning wraps. These give the advantage of a higher save, and increases to your stunning fist DC (You'll be using Stunning Fist a lot). However, they'll activate less. Another option is 2 Vorpal Kamas. These could be LETHAL against things you couldn't normally touch due to high DR. (An attack speed monk suffers more out of DR than any other class/build) However, these are EXPENSIVE and they'll take away from your total DPS. Something else that's fun for taking bosses down to size are Shortswords (If you have Ninja Spy) or Longswords (If you have the feat that lets you use em) with Wounding of Puncturing. It'll be hard to get ahold of 2 of these, but you won't regret it if you do.
For DR, if you can't get Vorpals I'd go with 2 metalline swords of your chosen type. (I'm going with Ninja Spy so I use shortswords)

Now we come to the topic of Strength based monks. You'll be relying on the Sun stances for damage. I'd recommend using handwraps here, as they'll hit faster than 2 weapons, and with the Sun stances and Crane Path (With improved Crit: Bludgeon) You'll be rolling in Ki. Concentration's important, but this isn't a build guide so I won't cover that. More importantly, you'll want to invest in Stunning wraps to boost the DC of your Stunning Fist, something you'll be using as quickly as it can cool down. You'll also be using ToD a lot, so handwraps are, once again, important. You shouldn't be using things like Paralyzing, because you won't be hitting enough to hope that they roll a natural 1 on their save.

If you use Wisdom, the only advice I can give is to get Stunning wraps and use Ninja Spy: Shadow Fade to approach and stun high-danger targets. Sneak past all the normal enemies and take out bosses and dangerous casters. With Stunning +10 wraps and a good wisdom score, stunning fist will be practically impossible to resist, escpecially since it's a Fort save and you'll mainly be taking out casters.

If you're Constitution based, weapons won't matter much to you. I'd stick with Handwraps if you're going dark, because your Concentration skill will be fairly high, possibly allowing you to store a ToD. Before bosses, you could go into Stealth and use One with Shadow to build up enough Ki for a ToD, but once again your role will not be damage.

Hoping that this guide helps all the monks out there, and that there's not already an obvious guide out to make me look stupid :)

[Antheal]

So what if you're a Light path, Earth-stance Monk?

[Eggplant]

Then chances are you won't care about what weapons you use. However, if you REALLY gotta know what weapons you should use I would recommend getting those Metalline wraps so you can boost your Ki generation against more enemies. But that won't really be important because chances are in that situation you'll be a tank/healer/buffer, getting your Ki from being hit.

[TPICKRELL]

Not quite sure where to start, but some of this advice doesn't line up with my experiences running my monks... Your experiences may vary, but here are my thoughts...

First, all unarmed monks are attack speed builds. You get a big unarmed attack speed boost from flurry of blows whether you are str or dex or wis or anything else builds. So, using swords or kamas has only made sense for my toons when I need to bypass DR. Mostly for zombies, golems or some spiders... At levels 17 or so and above, vorps start to be a very viable option for creatures that are not immune (death ward, epic ward...) and who have a lot of hit points. Until then, I've not found any situations where vorps were very useful for me. From then on, Vorps are frequently in my hands.

Paras on the other hand are very effective for me from level 10 to level 15 and in some places all the way to level 17. My level 18 dark monk has been very successful using a Para of Stunning+6 in many of the vale quests on normal. Monsters make there saves frequently, but they don't need to roll a 1 to fail. Regardless of the build, whereever paras are landing with consisstency, they are a solid crowd control option. Paras are crowd control, not damage. They give up damage you do to mobs in return for a substantial decrease in damage received by you or the party. When the mobs can be paralyzed, it is often a very good trade off to make. When soloing, paras are often my weapon of choice at least through the Vale Slayer.

On Stunning Fist... its a fabulous ability, but you will need to have a solid Wisdom to get a DC that is high enough to use it throughout the game. Many Pure Str Builds use Wis as a dump stat, so they are way better off taking Stunning Blow instead. Your advice to use stunning wraps still applies, but Str Builds may need Stunning Blow instead of or in addition to Stunning Fist.

As an overall note, Monk DPS is almost always better with hand wraps, and I believe monks should be matching weapons to the situation. I carry 15 or 20 wraps on all my monks and switch them from fight to fight. At low levels, I carry one set of kamas for creatures that are resistant to bludgeoning (say holy of pure goods), but thats it. At high levels I carry 1 pair of the highest plus vorps I can find, but that's it. I mostly use Greater Banes where I can't bypass base damage with Wraps.

Ninja spy is cool, and it lets you use swords, but unless you have a very good pair of swords(epic or greensteel most likley) there is almost no chance that swords will out DPS a decent set of wraps. The difference between wraps and swords/kamas is smaller at low levels, but increases quite dramatically as you level.