I'm sorry to say this, but if "this game isn't about the gear", why do you shout with gear criteria ?
And besides, gear is not enough for endgame but saddly it's necessary, so it's mainly about the gear.

And thankfully, no support needs to be leveled to 50. The higher cross-class I saw was Mantra from PGL42 (Don't have time to check THM or ACN), and it's not that useful when you can only choose 5 skills. Since it's very long to level multiple classes, finishing roughly at 35 is a real blessing