The 9.1 Fistweaving Compendium – Gearing
The following guide was written by Sweggles from Midwinter. This is the 9.1 Gearing portion of the guide. You can find the in-depth playstyle page by clicking here. It’s recommended that you start with the playstyle guide and then come here afterwards to brush up on how to gear your character.
Shadowlands Gearing Systems
Shadowlands has multiple complex gearing systems that interact with each other. You’ll pick a legendary, you’ll socket 4-5 conduits, pick a “soulbind path”, equip up to five domination shards of up to five different ranks of nine different gems, and then equip your two best trinkets with a myriad of different effects of varying strengths. Seem like a lot? It is, and so we’re going to step by it one system at a time.
Legendaries
Fistweaving comparative to Upwelling has a lot of freedom over which legendaries you can play and make work. Upwelling is pigeon-holed into playing 1-2 legendaries whereas Fistweaving unlocks the option of playing almost anything you like. That being said there are still legendaries that outperform others consistently.
Ancient Teachings of the Monastery
Craft on: Wrists. Recommended Stats: Any two of Haste / Crit / Versatility. Acronym: AtotM
This is your fistweaving lifeblood and you can consider it your absolute default choice. It provides a lot of HPS without any major changes to your playstyle (we are even talking 15-20%+ on some fights). You’ll play this on almost every fight. If you crafted it on Gloves in 9.0.5 then you will need to recraft on Wrists as the Gloves slot has a domination socket on it. I know it’s annoying to have to do so.
Invoker’s Delight
Craft on: Back. Recommended Stats: Any two of Haste / Crit / Versatility. Acronym: ID
Invoker’s Delight is a niche, but situationally incredibly powerful legendary that massively increases the power of your Celestials. With Invoker’s Delight, Yu’lon becomes the single strongest pure throughput cooldown in the game with nothing else really coming close. Even 40k+ HPS is possible for the duration of Yu’lons and while this kind of insane burst healing is rarely needed there are few fights where this legendary could be played over Ancient Teachings. Some examples might include Mythic Guardian of the First Ones or Kel’thuzad. This is very comp dependent though so we’ll see.
It should also be mentioned that Invoker’s Delight is never mandatory, you can play Ancient Teachings on literally everything and it will still do very similar healing. For this reason you should consider Invoker’s Delight for your second or third legendary craft rather than your first.
Tear of Morning
Craft on: Waist. Recommended Stats: Any two of Haste / Crit / Versatility. Acronym: ToM
In raid Tear of morning just doesn’t stack up from a throughput perspective. It’s difficult to play, difficult to budget mana for and is soundly beaten on mana efficiency and damage by the much stronger Ancient Teachings of the Monastery. In Mythic+ it’s more capable, but this will be discussed further in the dungeon guide. Anyone who crafted on Helm will need to recraft on Waist in 9.1 since Helm is a key domination socket slot.
Domination Gems
Full article: https://questionablyepic.com/domination-sockets/
You can get your own domination gem graph, tailored to your character in QE Live.
For healing: Socket all three Unholy shards, Shard of Kyr (self-absorb), and either Shard of Rev (leech) or Shard of Tel (absorb on crits).
For damage: Socket all three Blood Shards, plus two gems of your choice. You can either socket the damage Unholy & Frost shards, or opt for a mixed set with Shard of Kyr & Rev / Tel.
In most cases you will just opt for the Unholy set as the healing increase is ridiculously high. Late in prog when you have multiple high rank sets you might choose to opt for damage instead for a particular boss.
Upgrading Shards
Prioritize upgrading your domination set first since it scales up fast based on the lowest level gem in the set.
Comparing Domination Socket pieces to higher ilvl unsocketed pieces
You can compare items in QE Live either by importing them automatically via a SimC string, or by adding them manually in Quick Compare with a gem of your choice. As a general rule you’ll always take domination socket items when they give you a set bonus.
Trinkets
You can get your own trinket graph, tailored to your character in QE Live.
Generally you’re on the hunt for strong stat trinkets like Unbound Changeling, Soulletting Ruby, Titanic Ocular Gland and more. Mastery on-use trinkets like Shadowed Orb of Torment and Instructor’s Divine Bell have a huge amount of potential when combined with Chi-ji and Revival but there is still some math to do in this area.
Covenants In-Depth
While Necrolord was was hard to beat in 9.0.5, Kyrian and Venthyr are now equally competitive. Kyrian provides insanely strong soulbinds and the option of playing the new Call to Arms legendary. Venthyr on the other hand is entirely driven by it’s new legendary Sinister Teachings. With a little bit of crit you can cast Fallen Order every minute (sometimes more). Necrolord is tougher to play, and requires smart use of Bonedust Brew to match up to the two above. If you really enjoy Night Fae then you can keep playing that too – it offers best in spec damage.
Venthyr
Legendary: Sinister Teachings (default)
Recommended Soubind: Theotar
Kyrian
Legendary: Ancient Teachings of the Monastery (default), Call to Arms (situational / more testing needed).
Recommended Soubind: Pelagos (burst healing) or Kleia (sustained healing).
Necrolord
Legendary: Ancient Teachings of the Monastery
Recommended Soulbind: Emeni
Necrolord gives you incredible, flexible cooldown synergies through the short one minute cooldown on Bonedust Brew. On fights where you’re better off splitting up your cooldowns, this gives you a Brew for every Chi-ji and for every Revival. You can use it to build ridiculous, frequent cooldown windows.
Quick Fire Questions
How should my stats look?
Intellect is still our best stat by a very large margin. With the 9.1 changes our secondaries are now very close in value and you’ll take item level in most cases. You can use QE Live to optimize your gear and it’ll shortly have support for covenant-specific weights to hone in on an even greater level of accuracy. Mastery is notably very strong during your cooldown windows, and then significantly weaker outside of them.
What about Conduits?
None are hugely impactful, and you will play some combination of the following:
- Resplendent Mists and Rising Sun Revival are your core. For your third slot you can socket Bone Marrow Hope (Necrolord) or Jade Bond.
I’ve got an extra question for you
You can bring any extra questions to the Peak of Serenity discord, or to me directly. Questions and comments are always welcome.
You can catch Sweggles on twitch at https://twitch.tv/SwegglesQT, or on Discord at sweggles#0001.
Hello,
I’m trying to sim my monk but when I submit the string I get the message “QE Live is designed for level 60 characters.”