The Mighty Monk

Monks can wear light and very light armor, which means clothe or leather!

Fists, Mace, Staff, Hammer, Great Hammer, Thrown Weapon. We can
use one-handed, two-handed, and dual wield weapons.

There is very little difference in damage whether using DW or 2H
weapons. Weapon procs are scaled to the speed of your weapon and scaled
based on DW or 2H, so that's not a factor. The 2H weapon will have
lower stat bonuses than the DW weapons, but it is assumed that when
dual wielding you will get hit by more ripostes. Both the fist weapons
and the two-handed bo staves have very cool animations.

It is believed that when wielding a 2H weapon you will get more
procs from your combat arts, but this has not been proven.

Do not use a one handed weapon. You don't have anything to put
in
your offhand, you get lower stat bonuses than dual wielding, and you do
less damage than either DW or 2H.

No. Your fists are treated like a one handed weapon, and
obviously
have no stat bonuses. If you want the bare fist look, use some fistwrap
weapons. They have the same graphic and combat animations as bare
fists, but have the advantage of actually being good weapons.

You have three choices: fistwraps, a cestii, or a cestus.
Fistwraps
have no graphic, do crushing damage, and have a 1.4 delay. A cestii
(which should really be called a katar) has a single or triple
handblade, does slash damage, and has a 2.0 delay. A cestus does
piercing damage, has a 1.6 delay, and looks like... um... a salad bowl
covered in spikes.

All three fist weapons do different damage types, but use your
crush
skill to determine how often they hit. This is so we don't have to
raise up three different weapon skills. Please note that if you find a
hand weapon that gives you either slashing or piercing skill raises you
should /bug it with the exact weapon name so it can be fixed.

Weaponsmiths make the hand weapons, though the key resource is a
leather strap. This can be made natively by tailors though anyone with
the right Weaving skill book can make one as well. Happily, rare pelts
are generally much cheaper than rare metals and rare woods, so the
price of a rare crafted fist weapon should be relatively low.

This is a matter of personal preference. Personally, I feel that
slow weapons are superior to fast weapons for two reasons. First, you
get less riposte damage when using a slow weapon. Second, if you time
your attacks well you can do more damage.

When you swing your weapon, you start a timer ticking. This
timer is
equal to the delay of your weapons. When the timer is up, you swing,
and the timer starts over. However, if you're currently casting a
combat art you will not swing until your art finishes. The timer does
not start until you actually swing, so you might waste some of the
speed of your weapons while casting. If you time your attacks so that
you swing immediately after a combat art, then start using the next art
immediately, you can maximize both your autoattack damage and your
combat art damage. If your weapons are too fast then they aren't
swinging at their full speed due to the time wasted casting a combat
art. If your weapons are too slow, you either have to wait too long
after finishing an art, or you start using the next art before you
swing and waste a lot of delay time while casting the next one.

But if you don't care about squeezing out every last bit of
damage
then just use whatever weapons you think are cool. There really isn't
enough of a difference to spend much time worrying about.

I don't know. I've personally had 181% haste before (type
/show_window MainHUD.Character to find out your haste value), so either
the haste cap is above that or the haste value displayed is wrong.
Watching my attack speed, there was a very visible difference between
181% and 110%.

I don't know. I will be running a test on that soon.

You can't. Not yet, anyway. Sorry.

This advice comes courtesy of Morrolan V:

I bought player-made etched (non-rare), then to Emerald
Hide (Zek quested, usable at 35), then to Enchanted Thicket Woven
(drops from Lamias in EL, usable at 38). Continued to wear the Emerald
occasionally when tanking for a couple of levels, as it has much more
mitigation than the Thicket stuff. Still have never seen a set of armor
short of raid drop that has better stats than the Thicket, though. I
did wear the Chainweave Gi until 32.

Also, if you have a high threshold for boredom you might want to
try
camping Huuptics on the Feerrott beach. They have a ridiculously rare
drop "tattered robe" which starts an easy quest for the Robe of the
Invoker. This robe has 20/tick in-combat power regen and is fantastic,
but it is very rare and the mobs start turning grey at 41.

Thicket woven armor will treat you well for a few levels. After
that, consider wearing pristine crafted armor or a mishmash of drops
until you can buy or harvest enough Superb pelts and Augmented items to
make a set of Augmented leather, the 40-50 rare crafted armor.

Crafted
Tailored Scaled armor is a good choice. In addition, there are a couple Gis that drop in Desert of Flames, that are maybe
not as good as some of the other dropped or crafter leather armor, but they give you that Monk "look" that many enjoy.
One Gi being the Rujarkian Gi, dropped in the Clefts. The other being the Ashen Disciple Gi dropped in Pillar of Flames.
These pieces should last you well into your 60's.

You have some good options for upper end monks, but what you wear will heavily depend on what resources you have for gameplay! First off, you haven't yet, do the Blood of the Brood signature quest in Kingdom of Sky. This will get you your class hat. If you are a solo player and don't spend time grouping, then your best bet will be crafted items. If you are a grouper (and this is the category I fall into myself) then I'd suggest working towards gather all of the pieces in the Wu's Fighting Armor. These pieces all drop from mob bosses in the Echoes of Faydwer instances. If you have access to pick up or group raids, then go for those relic pieces!! You just cannot beat the Crescent Moon armor set for monks. Raiders will also have the ability to work towards a a dragonscale set, which is also very nice and looks pretty cool as well.

The Rise of Kunark expansion steps it up in the way of equipment. You can replace a good portion of your Tier 7 gear just through typical questing. Mastercrafted items have also gotten quite good, and now that crafters can make gis, crafted gear is more than just a viable option for the casual player!

The heroic dungeons in RoK have class pieces that are worth striving for if you happen to dungeon crawl. We have the benefit at this point in the game to choose function over appearance now that we have the appearance slots, so pick your favorite gi for looks, then get in on those nice leather chest pieces that we tend to pass up!