Pushing Monk's Limits: [HP]
Monks have the highest HP potential of all jobs in FFXI. What is the most HP that a monk can get? Well the picture above is pretty close to the limit 2491 HP, although I could still get a bit more. This is the highest HP you can get using only rare ex items (you can get 1% more hp with gold moogle belt, I only got silver, and another 2% more total hp from the new af2+1 monk gear, head and body). I only have 4 out of 8 HP merit upgrades, so I could get 40 more base HP from merits, which translates to 50 more HP total given the HP%+ stats.
I maxed out all HP slots except cape neck and possibly earrings. Currently I have 40+15 hp in earrings from rare ex intruders and ethereal, but if I wanted (I don't) I could replace my ethereal for a bloodbead earring (or pigeon+1) for 25 hp (cassie is useless since there's not enough extra mp to convert to hp with intruder as mnk/war), 10 more hp than the free and awesome rare ex ethereal. For the cape, monk can wear gigant mantle (way too pricy and not rare ex), for an extra 80 base HP or 100 total HP counting HP%+ effect. So considering all this, Hume monk can get 2541 without gigant mantle or earrings (basically all with free rare ex gear) and over 2600 with them.
The highest HP potential is however not hume but galka, but not all that much more. Galka monk at 75 have about 120 more base HP, so the total difference in hp counting HP%+ is just 150hp more. So, a galka monk, with lots of gil, a gold moogle belt, all my gear, plus the new melee+1/af2+1 set can get 2854 hp or so, by my rough calculations. Of course inside ballista you can use a temporary drink for doubling HP, so that would be 5708 HP o.O
Having said that, I still always had way more hp than galka monks in any mnk pt i've been in.