I have created this guide to provide insight into the many strengths and weaknesses of the battlemonk. The information provided has come from my individual study of the mechanics, research from meters and what has worked best for me.

Many people say the devs messed up on the battlemonk and that this is a broken combo. It wasn’t the devs that messed up, it was the community that misunderstood its complexity.
As a game programmer and designer, I saw an opportunity to challenge myself and identify broken elements of the combo. Well, it’s not broken. If somebody says otherwise, direct them to this guide.

Battlemonks offer a great amount of survivability, great dps, and can often save your party from a wipe.

This build is for melee, a bit of healing and no use of magic attack. It’s a build I find very fun and it’s continually proving powerful. This guide is what I found to be optimal through math, the capabilities of the battlemonk (talents, stat multipliers and gear available) and personal experience.

To start the guide off, if you’re below level 35 you’re probably wondering why people would ever want to play this combo. Your elite skills make the priest/warrior a battlemonk. It isn’t until level 35 that you really start to “shine”. So, it’s specifically oriented towards battlemonks past level 35.

While you’re leveling:

Spread out points in your battlemonk elite skills, buffs, regen and Heal (I avoided Urgent Heal as it’s a mana drain). 

Throttle Explosion of Fighting Spirit with your needs for dps; the higher the talent the more mana pots you will need to burn through. The need for mana pots tapers off when you start getting a good amount of wisdom but I don’t mind the need to pop mana pots. I prefer good dps over being efficient (ntBuff add-on auto pops potions when set up properly. I removed it after 55.).

Level up Faith with spare talent points as it will counter the battlemonks healing negation. 
Healing Salve is nice when soloing bosses and assisting healers in instances.
In later levels it is nice to be able to Holy Candle and Group Heal to save your group from wiping but it shouldn’t be a top priority. Don’t expect to heal near as well as somebody built to heal… but you should be able to do something when healers die or yell for a bit of healing help. 

Your main dps is going to be Explosion of Fighting Spirit, Ascending Dragon (Rage dump), and Fighting Spirit Combination (good for burst & a bit of mana efficiency).

Your Stats:
I’ll start off with what to avoid based on 50 points of an attribute and lvl 58 buffs…

Strength: 
50*.8 = 40 + 12.4% = 44.96 PA
50*.2 = 10 + 15% = 11.5 HP
Avoid like wild fire. It is one of the most useless stats for the battlemonk. The PA and HP bonus might be tempting, but it does not multiply well with the priest and any investment in strength is a bad investment. Some people think otherwise, but once you have access to yellow stats and greater, you get way more from stating from anything else. Any attribute, aside from int and dex, can replace strength to benefit a battlemonk, more than twice over, with a general gain. What strength gives you, you can get much more of in straight +PA.

Intelligence: 
50*.5 = 25 + 12.4% = 28.1 PA
50*1 = 50 MP
50*2 = 100 MA
Avoid this as much as strength also. The battlemonk doesn’t have any skill to take advantage of the magic attack it offers. Wisdom is better as I’ll explain. The PA bonus from this is almost nothing.

Dexterity: 
(Dex multipliers are wrong on wiki. I’ve calculated about .9ACC .77Dodge per dex)
50*.9 = 45 + 6% = 47.7 PACC
50*.77 = 38.5 Dodge
Dexterity offers a decent amount of dodge and a very important amount of accuracy that the battlemonk needs. Don’t overly invest into dexterity but it’s nice to have a good amount. Being able to hit instead of miss often provides a nice return in dps. I’ll go into the reason why accuracy is so important for a battlemonk later.

Wisdom (& +healing):
50*5 = 250 MP
50*3.2 = 160 MD
leaving out MACC (Useless)
Important for this build. This will offer the battlemonk a good amount of mana regen and survivability. Yes, survivability. Condensed rage is an amazing skill and I will go into this later. Of course, it will buff your heals also, and for this build it opens up the ability to help a bit when a healer dies or asks for help. Without wisdom, your mana based attacks will eat your reserves up fast.

Physical Attack (PA): 
(You get about double per base stats on yellow stats)
100 + 12.4% = 112.4 PA
Absolute must. When you’re not packing on Stamina you’re packing on PA. But! don’t put all your apples into one basket. A lack of accuracy, a high damage weapon or survivability can make your PA useless.

Stamina: 
50*1.5 = 75 + 56% = 117 PD
50*5 = 250 + 15% = 287.5 HP
I give this the highest priority as the battlemonk buffs take advantage of it the most. When you pack on enough and feel you are equal to or out surviving everybody but the tanks, you can move on and invest into PA and a bit of wisdom/healing. Investing in a lot of stamina allows you to use berserk which is very important in order to pump out some great dps. No stamina = a dead clothie, especially when berserking.

Wild cards: 
+HP & +PD our buffs can take advantage of. These fit nicely on a yellow stat accompanied by another highly useful stat. When you’re over 25k PD, the +PD isn’t near as useful as it doesn’t even offer a 1% gain to your total PD.

How To Start Getting Good Gear. (For levels 54+, otherwise skip for now)

Any combination that begins to go past lvl 55 will start needing gear in order to be useful in instances. To save groups the trouble of dealing with an under geared character, and to save your name, I suggest doing events in Thunderhoof Hills.
Type /join THEvents to join the event channel. Ask nicely in the channel weather there are any keywords you must type in channel in order to auto join the events raid.
Follow the raid around for a few hours and you’ll quickly get a grasp of the events. You’ll also gain different currencies that you can trade in for ancient mementos, or "mentos" as most call it.
You can use the mentos at black codex vendors to purchase the gear that fits nicely with the battlemonk and to get yellow stats that fit well with the stats listed above. 

A guide to transmuting basics: http://forum.us.runesofmagic.com/showthread.php?t=40969
I suggest using purified fusion stones that can be purchased in the item shop, or bought with gold through a player that has access to them.
You can also purchase the outcome, a mana stone with a single yellow stat, from the the auction house.

A wiki link to available gear through codex: http://www.theromwiki.com/Black_Codex 
(This link is currently missing updated gear outside DoD and the vendors outside Southern Jonast Forest (SJF)) 

I recommend waiting until you gain 280 mentos and purchasing the SJF gear for quick boosts to your stats and avoiding unneeded upgrades.
You can usually get about 100 mentos in two to three hours.

Once you have substantially upgraded your gear, you can think about running end-game content for harder to get gear.

How to make the battlemonk have amazing survivability.

Condensed Rage: Either this skill scales well with +healing and/or it doesn’t receive the 30% healing negation. When you’re hit it will heal you. It procs immediately after the first hit and will only proc after an additional 30 seconds. This allows you to take a big hit and walk away with an instant heal to give you valuable seconds to pop Holy Aura or Soul Source. This is also great when you’re questing or grinding because you rarely need to heal yourself. With a good amount of wis/healing condensed rage does 100% of my healing while I grind.
When raiding, I like to carry some rage potions to use enrage -> rage potion -> condensed rage. It’s a life saver. 
~The general set skill Energy Restore allows you to channel rage regeneration and the need for a rage potion to buff is eliminated.

Your shield: Battlemonks get a nice defense bonus. In order to take advantage of this, you’re going to want to grab a tanking shield. A high defense on it will scale nicely with your battlemonk buffs and will help to take the squish out of you. You’ll eventually be able to offtank certain things and solo content usually only other well geared combos can handle. You’re melee, you will need it!

Your priest talents: Don’t forget you’re a priest. Holy Aura and Soul Source are very powerful survival tools and don’t require any special gear or talent allocation. 
Holy Aura makes it possible to take off the last couple percent of most bosses with the rest of the raid dead. It makes you immune to all damage and most effects for 5 seconds and it only has a two minute cool down. This is amazing when you see a boss about to use a big ability… just pop Holy Aura and sit through it.
Soul Source heals your group members to full. Before condensed rage healed well, I would often bypass heals and use Soul Source when grinding just to save on mana because of the little cool down and no mana cost.
I have both of these bound to my mouse thumb buttons for quick usage. I use them so much during a raid their usually on cool down.

How to compete in DPS…

Get a high damage axe asap. I’ve only ever found axes a viable option. Get as high dps as possible because your talents are based off of that number. Tier it to your abilities or purchase it tiered then plus it up. This only opens up the door to dps. Don’t expect anything amazing yet.

Accuracy!!! You’re going to be missing a lot without it. Get some dexterity and/or +accuracy. The reason why your accuracy is horrible is because you’re a priest. Priest’s weapon skills are very low compared to other melee classes. To make up for that, a bit of accuracy makes a huge difference. You’ll notice this more and more as you start fighting more difficult bosses. Without being able to hit your dps goes down the tubes.

Berserk! Use it and use it with caution. Only level it to +25% to 30% or so and only use it when you know you’re safe. I prefer popping this just before a rage dump and removing it if you think a boss is about to use an ability. This is another reason why a tanking shield and a load of stamina is important. And, if you do get hit with berserk up, thank goodness for condensed rage and the +healing. A good amount of your dps will come from berserk. You can level it higher if you like to be risky, but you’re going to be stuck with the drawbacks unless you respec. 
Once you get enough defense, you’ll hit the cap for most mobs PA so you can pop berserk and see no difference in the amount of damage you’re taking, even after a 30% reduction to your PD.

Stat for PA. You’ll need a good amount of PA to put up some numbers. Your berserk is useless if you don’t have much PA because berserk increases it on a percentage basis.
If your PA hasn’t reached what the mobs defense is, there is a horrible drop off in damage. Don’t judge your dps on mobs outside instances because mobs in a normal difficulty instance have a much higher defense. 

Get your 50 elite. I know this is horribly difficult, expensive and time consuming, but it has +accuracy for you and your party and damage bonuses to the 2 most used skills; Ascending Dragon and Explosion of Fighting Spirit.

As long as the above criteria have been met, you will often out dps other melee… many that out-gear you.

What to look for in a pet…

Pets equate to a large boost in your stats as if you have an extra piece of gear. They can also nicely boost your damage every couple minutes.
Mathematically, Wind attribute pets are the best for battlemonks. It offers a lot of Dex for PACC/Dodge you will not get much of in your gear. It also offers a good amount of Stamina and Wisdom which are important stats needed for the battlemonk.
Dark or Light are other options for a minor increase to PA, but you will loose out being forced to use strength which doesn’t multiply well with the priest.

You will want a pet that has a good +% PA buff such as a bear or hawk. For even more survivability, you can stick with an elf that heals you when you drop below 50%

You’ll probably want to stat your pet with +% PA, or +% crit damage depending on weather you’ve stated +crit chance.

To note:
Don’t be stingy about the dps meters, be a team player. Good players will notice your ability to accommodate a healer hitting the floor. Keeping up your parties dps players to finish a fight is better than a wipe.
Our buffs are a bit of an eye sore. I suggest getting a mod that removes intensive effects. It has removed my fps problems and increased my dps. 
EU forum link to the mod I use: https://forum.runesofmagic.com/showthread.php?t=153205
Unzip and place it in your base RoM directory.

If you have any questions… please be professional and courteous and stay on topic of battlemonk mechanics. I would love to see other battlemonks do great. Salvage our name. Don’t let people cringe when they see a p/w. I hope this is only seen as a favor.

Credits go to spazzpunker.