Monk Heirlooms

With the beta invites being sent out by the hundreds of thousands and the expansion drawing ever closer to going live, I think it’s time to start getting plans for heirlooms in motion.

I know a lot of people will not want to use heirlooms on their monks, especially since the class and expansion are going to be brand new, but I also know that there are a lot of people who really don’t like the leveling process at all who are going to make use of every heirloom they can get their hands on. And you can’t forget the twinks, of course.

This guide is written for those of you who do want to use heirlooms on your Monks, and would like a little direction in which purchases to make, and which enchants to use on them if you feel like maximizing your leveling potential.

As you continue reading, please keep in mind that this guide is aimed strictly at showing you which heirlooms are you best option among the heirloom gear; I am not necessarily saying that you should use these heirlooms exclusively and ignore all other gear. For example, I would never use the Dread Pirate Ring unless I really wanted to level a character quickly because it offers only secondary stats and an experience bonus. I would much rather use rings that provide a bonus to my primary stats that I know I’m going to use. As a guide that covers heirlooms though, I’m going over every slot for which heirlooms exist to say, “if you’re going to use an heirloom in this slot, then this is the one you want.”

NOTE: At this time Blizzard is planning to remove Head enchants from the game once MoP goes live (or more likely, the patch right before it goes live). I am going to leave them listed in the guide for now because (A) they haven’t actually been removed yet and (B) it’s still in beta so it is possible, however unlikely, that they will revert the change and add them back in.

Heirlooms in Mists of Pandaria
As far as we are aware at this point, there have been no new changes to heirlooms in the upcoming expansion. The items still have the same level restrictions, the same item level limits that prevent using upgraded enchants, a quick scroll through the list looks like they all give the same bonuses to the same stats, and there is still no way of getting heirlooms from one server to another without paying for a character transfer.

There has also been no change to the methods of farming for your heirlooms, so you’ll still need to pick your chosen method(s) of farming for Justice Points, Honor, Champion Seals, Darkmoon Artifacts, and gold along with guild reputation.

The fastest method of farming that I’ve found so far has definitely been Honor farming. Doing random BG’s at least until you score a victory, hitting Tol Borad every chance you get, doing Wintergrasp weeklies, and so on can really get those Honor points flowing. The PvE heirlooms are almost without exception better than the PvP heirlooms, but you can convert your Honor to Justice Points and still earn those heirlooms faster than if you had just farmed the JP itself. Running a few random dungeons can speed up that process too, of course, but if you’re going to pick and single method and stick with it then Honor is the key for me.

A Quick and Dirty Look at the Monk Class
Monks are the new class coming in Mists of Pandaria (MoP), which are very mechanically similar to Druids in many ways. Monk talent trees allow them to fill three of the four roles: tank, heals, and melee DPS.

Two of the Monk talent trees utilize Agility as their primary stat, very similar to the Druid’s feral forms. The third tree, healing, utilizes Intellect as their primary stat, similar to the Druid’s Moonkin and Restoration specs. Monks also have another resource called Chi, but gear has no impact on Chi so I will not discuss it in this article.

The only real difference in heirloom choices between the two classes at all is in which weapons they are able to equip. Monks have a pretty limited selection of weapons to chose from, but they also have the advantage of being able to dual wield in all three specs. According to the Monk overview on battle.net, the Monk can use the following weapons: Fist, one-handed Axe, one-handed Mace, one-handed Sword, Staff, Polearm. Of those weapons, there are no fist or polearm heirlooms and the restriction of only being able to use one-handed versions of most of the melee weapons as well as no access to Daggers means that some of the better Agility-based heirlooms are off limits. Lucky for the Mistweaver healing spec, Monks do have access to staves which means they’ll be flying high with one of the strongest heirloom weapons available.

Brewmaster (Tank) and Windwalker (Melee DPS)
Both of these specs use Agility as their primary stat, so many of our gear choices will be very simple. At this point in time I am not in the MoP beta yet, so my knowledge of the class comes only from what I’ve been able to read online. Once I am able to see more about how each of these specs work I will be able to revise this list, if necessary, to adjust some item slots if a secondary stat priority makes one weapon (for example) significantly better than another.

Slot	Item Name	Stats
Helm	Stained Shadowcraft Cap	Agility, Stamina, Hit, Crit, +10% XP
Cloak	Inherited Cape of the Black Baron	Agility, Stamina, Crit, Haste, +5% XP
Shoulder	Stained Shadowcraft Spaulders	Agility, Stamina, Hit, +10% XP
Chest	Stained Shadowcraft Tunic	Agility, Stamina, Hit, +10% XP
Ring 1	Dread Pirate Ring	Stamina, Hit, Crit, +5% XP
Main Hand	Burnished Warden Staff	Agility, Stamina, Crit, Haste
Main Hand	Venerable Dal’Rend’s Sacred Charge	Agility, Stamina, Crit
Off-Hand	Venerable Mace of McGowan	Agility, Stamina, Crit, Haste
Trinkets	Swift Hand of Justice x2	Haste, Kills restore health
Suggested Enchants

As far as the armor pieces go, there’s no question those are the ones that you want. Since Monks are limited to only cloth and leather armor, you want the leather pieces that have Agility (not that you have a choice).

Weapons give you a little bit of wiggle room because there are two options for you to choose from. The only reason I went with a Sacred Charge and a Mace is because I found no indication in my research that Monks gain any particular benefit from Haste. The Sacred Charge has a higher Crit bonus because it has no other secondary stat, so I would lean towards using one from a min/max perspective. The values of the secondary stats are low enough that you’ll be perfectly fine dual-wielding Maces if you would rather do that. [UPDATE] With the addition of the Burnished Warden Staff, it does actually give you better stats overall than dual wielding. I would have to double-check the attack skills of both melee specs to see if there is any specific reason to dual wield rather than go with the two-handed staff, but from a stats standpoint the staff is the clear winner. Now, be aware that if you follow that link to Wowhead you’ll see that the staff shows significantly higher stats on Wowhead than it does in the game.

The actual stats of the Burnished Warden Staff on a level 80 character are: BWS (80): +68 Agi, +103 Sta, +45 Crit, +45 Haste
[/UPDATE]

The only reason I’m suggesting Haste trinkets is because you would get no benefit at all from the Intellect trinkets and their mana restoration, which is your only other option for heirlooms.

Mistweaver (Healing)
The Monk is a leather wearing class, so leather armor is the way you should go in my opinion. If you have the cloth heirlooms and want to use those then feel free to do so. The major difference between the leather set and the cloth set is that leather pieces have Spirit on them while cloth pieces have Haste. While looking over the Mistweaver’s healing spells, I didn’t see any particular need for Haste where as the changes to intellect and mana pools has only increased the importance of Spirit for mana regeneration.

Slot	Item Name	Stats
Helm	Preened Tribal War Feathers	Stamina, Intellect, Spirit, Crit, +10% XP
Cloak	Ancient Bloodmoon Cloak	Stamina, Intellect, Crit, Haste, +5% XP
Shoulder	Preened Ironfeather Shoulders	Stamina, Intellect, Crit, +10% XP
Chest	Preened Ironfeather Breastplate	Stamina, Intellect, Crit, +10% XP
Ring 1	Dread Pirate Ring	Stamina, Hit, Crit, +5% XP
Main Hand	Dignified Headmaster’s Charge	Stamina, Intellect, Crit, Spell Power
Trinkets	Discerning Eye of the Beast x2	Intellect, Kills restore mana
Suggested Enchants

The staff beats out the one handed options at every level. You can occasionally get higher stats for a level or two when you combine a one-handed BoA caster mace with an off-hand item, but the staff will top the combination again within a few levels until you get near to not using the 1-80 heirlooms any more anyway. Even though you can dual wield as a Monk healer, the off-hand weapons that have caster stats on them suck.

Enchanting Your Monk Heirlooms
I know a lot of people feel that using heirlooms in the first place already makes the leveling process too easy or too fast, but I play to level and I treat my leveling game the same way other people treat their end game. That means I like to maximize my performance at all times and in every way that I can, which includes enchanting my heirlooms with the best enchants available.

For those slots that I give multiple options for enchanting I have listed the enchants in the order that I would suggest them. As this guide is directed at leveling, I’m going to put my focus on leveling and not PvP twinking. What this means is, I’m going to lean heavily towards enchants that will benefit you through the entire leveling process as much as possible. If you are looking at this list for your twinks then you shouldn’t necessarily assume that it’s the best enchant for a PvP twink. If you have questions about enchanting heirlooms for your twinks, leave me a comment and I’ll be happy to help.

Brewmaster and Windwalker (Agility)
Helm: (Return to Gear)

Arcanum of Ferocity: +34 Attack Power, +16 Hit

Arcanum of the Outcast: +17 Strength, +16 Intellect

Both of the Arcanums require you to grind reputation to purchase, and they both have a level requirement of 70.

Ferocity is the clear winner here as there isn’t an Agility enchant available for you. Outcast is a decent option, though it’s not spectacular since Strength is only half as good as Agility at best, and the Intellect doesn’t do anything for you in either of these specs.

Cloak: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Cloak – Stealth: +8 Agility, +8 Dodge

Enchant Cloak – Lesser Agility: +3 Agility

Enchant Cloak – Superior Defense: +70 Armor

Swordguard Embroidery: Attacks have a chance to grant 400 Attack Power for 15 seconds.

Flexweave Underlay: Turns your cloak into a parachute for 30 sec.

Stealth requires a reputation grind, but has no level requirement. The Embroideries require Tailoring of 400 to activate. Flexweave Underlay requires Engineering 380 to activate and use.

Stealth is by far your best option thanks to the change it received in the Shattering making it what it is today. Superior Defense is a great enchant when you’re at a low level, but the higher you go the less important it becomes, so from a leveling perspective I’d even take +3 Agility over +70 Armor.

Shoulder: (Return to Gear)

Inscription of Vengeance: +26 Attack Power

Greater Inscription of Vengeance: +30 Attack Power, +10 Crit

Greater Inscription of the Gladiator: +30 Stamina, +15 Resilience

Master’s Inscription of the Axe: +120 Attack Power, +15 Crit

Inscription of Warding: +13 Dodge

Greater Inscription of Warding: +15 Dodge, +15 Stamina

Master’s Inscription of the Pinnacle: +60 Dodge, +15 Parry

The Inscriptions and Greater Inscriptions (except Gladiator) all require reputation grinds. Inscriptions require level 64 to activate, and Greater Inscriptions require level 70 to activate. Master’s Inscriptions require the Inscription profession and a skill level of 400 to activate.

My personal preference on Shoulder enchants is the level 64 Inscriptions, Vengeance in this case, because it gives me 16 full levels of benefit before I stop wearing the heirloom shoulders. Next up for me would be the Greater Inscriptions to use from 70-80. The Inscription profession is one that gives little benefit to having on more than one character on the same server, so I wouldn’t personally use the Master’s Inscriptions.

If you’re a Brewmaster Tank, then you’ll want to look at the last 3 for your tanking stats.

Chest: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Chest – Great Stats: +4 All Stats

Enchant Chest – Stats: +3 All Stats

Enchant Chest – Major Health: +100 Health

While an extra 100 health is a pretty big deal early on, it doesn’t take long to become nearly worthless. For that reason my personal recommendation is that you go with either the +4 or +3 Stats enchants. With Stats you’re getting 10 health for each point, plus you’re getting that buff to your primary and secondary attribute stats as well.

Weapons: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Weapon – Agility: +25 Agility

Enchant Weapon – Agility: +15 Agility

Enchant Weapon – Crusader: Proc: Heal for 75-125 and +100 Strength for 15 sec.

[UPDATE]With the new heirloom staff being introduced, the +25 Agility enchant is where it’s at. Everything else in the weapons section will still apply beyond that point. You certainly don’t want to settle for +15 Agility if you can get your hands on +25, but you can use the +15 just fine if that’s the best you can find. For the long term, I would say the +Agility enchants are where it’s at end the end game so you might as well use them from level 1 on.[/UPDATE]

Since Monks can dual wield, you’ll most likely want to use two +15 Agility enchants on your weapons. I haven’t found a good article covering the stat changes in MoP yet, so I’m not 100% sure if Monks will benefit at all from Strength or not. Since I’m not sure, I’m going to assume that things remain as they are for now, and I’ll revise this portion later if I find out differently.

My personal preference for Monks will be to use the Agility enchants over Crusader, or possibly to use one of each enchant with Crusader on the main hand weapon for more chances to proc its effect.

Ring: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Ring – Stats: +4 All Stats

This ring enchant requires a reputation grind to purchase the pattern for it, requires you to be an Enchanter to activate it, and requires character level 25 to activate. I don’t have the heirloom ring to try it out myself, but there are mixed replies as to whether or not there is an Enchanting skill level requirement to activate them as well, though it would be 300 if so.

Since only enchanters can enchant their own rings, I’m only going to list this one since it has the most benefit with the lowest level requirement. If you level an enchanter high enough to use the other enchants possible, the mats are cheap to re-enchant it with whatever you want instead.

Mistweaver (Intellect)
Helm: (Return to Gear)

Arcanum of Renewal: +16 Intellect, +18 Spirit

Arcanum of Power: +22 Spell Power, +14 Hit

Both of the Arcanums require you to grind reputation to purchase, and they both have a level requirement of 70.

It’s up to you whether you would rather enchant more for DPS (Arcanum of Power) or Healing (Arcanum of Renewal). If you’re concerned with mana regen, you’ll want to go with Renewal. Otherwise, go Power for stronger heals and a Hit bonus.

Cloak: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Cloak – Stealth: +8 Agility, +8 Dodge

Enchant Cloak – Superior Defense: +70 Armor

Enchant Cloak – Subtlety: Decreases threat by 2%

Lightweave Embroidery: Casting has a chance to grant 295 Spell Power for 15 sec.

Darkglow Embroidery: Casting has a chance to restore 400 mana.

Swordguard Embroidery: Attacks have a chance to grant 400 Attack Power for 15 seconds.

Flexweave Underlay: Turns your cloak into a parachute for 30 sec.

Stealth requires a reputation grind, but has no level requirement. The Embroideries require Tailoring of 400 to activate. Flexweave Underlay requires Engineering 380 to activate and use.

If you’re wondering where the caster enchants are for cloaks, welcome to the club. Your best choices are professions-specific and will give you no benefit until you’re in your 60’s at the earliest. If you’re a solo player or like to level in PvP, then Stealth and Superior Defense are your best options because they’ll add some survivability. If you prefer to stay in groups then Subtlety is a decent option to help reduce your threat, though it’s largely unnecessary. My personal preference is Stealth, though I do have Subtlety on one of mine and a +5 to All Resistances on another. There just isn’t a good caster option outside of professions.

Shoulder: (Return to Gear)

Inscription of Discipline: +15 Spell Power

Greater Inscription of Discipline: +18 Spell Power, +10 Crit

Greater Inscription of Faith: +15 Intellect, +10 Spirit

Greater Inscription of the Orb: +12 Spell Power, +15 Crit

Greater Inscription of the Gladiator: +30 Stamina, +15 Resilience

Heavy Knothide Armor Kit: +10 Stamina

Master’s Inscription of the Crag: +60 Intellect, +15 Spirit

Master’s Inscription of the Storm: +70 Spell Power, +15 Crit

The Inscriptions and Greater Inscriptions (except Gladiator) all require reputation grinds. Inscriptions require level 64 to activate, and Greater Inscriptions require level 70 to activate. Master’s Inscriptions require the Inscription profession and a skill level of 400 to activate.

My personal preference on Shoulder enchants is the level 64 Inscriptions, Discipline in this case, because it gives me 16 full levels of benefit before I stop wearing the heirloom shoulders. Next up for me would be the Greater Inscriptions to use from 70-80. The Inscription profession is one that gives little benefit to having on more than one character on the same server, so I wouldn’t personally use the Master’s Inscriptions.

Chest: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Chest – Great Stats: +4 All Stats

Enchant Chest – Stats: +3 All Stats

Enchant Chest – Major Mana: +100 Mana

Enchant Chest – Major Health: +100 Health

While an extra 100 health or mana is a pretty big deal early on, it doesn’t take long to become nearly worthless. For that reason my personal recommendation is that you go with either the +4 or +3 Stats enchants. With Stats you’re getting health and spell power for each point, plus you’re getting that buff to your primary and secondary attribute stats as well.

With the changes to mana in MoP, maybe the +100 Mana enchant will become a big deal, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

Weapon: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Weapon – Spellpower: +30 Spell Power

Enchant Weapon – Healing Power: +29 Spell Power

Enchant Weapon – Mighty Intellect: +22 Intellect

In the current live patch Mighty Intellect is the superior enchant, but once MoP launches that’s going to change because Intellect will no longer increase your mana pool. There are only two things that will keep the +22 Int enchant on this list once MoP launches. First, it’s easier to find people that have +22 Int versus those with +30 SP not to mention it’s a cheaper enchant materials-wise. Second, Intellect still increases spell crit in MoP (as far as I’m aware), so you do get at least something besides just 22 SP vs. 30 SP out of the deal. Even with the spell crit factored in though, diminishing returns on spell crit will make the +22 Int enchant less and less effective every time you gain a level.

Ring: (Return to Gear)

Enchant Ring – Stats: +4 All Stats

Enchant Ring – Spellpower: +12 Spell Power

These ring enchants require reputation grinds to purchase the patterns for, they both require you to be an Enchanter to activate them, and they both require character level 25 to activate. I don’t have the heirloom ring to try it out myself, but there are mixed replies as to whether or not there is an Enchanting skill level requirement to activate them as well, though it would be 300 if so.

Since only enchanters can enchant their own rings, I’m only going to list these two since they have the most benefit with the lowest level requirement. If you level an enchanter high enough to use the other enchants possible, the mats are cheap to re-enchant it with whatever you want instead.