Thanks to everyone for your advice!

I kept checking Market Board and NPCs in lower Limsa for better gear - and slowly progressing through main story quests, which haven't been offering anything good - and I didn't think of checking the Grand Company store, or that certain NPC items are only in other areas. Didn't remember that my PLD45 quest finally got unlocked too. I'll go do that and get my ilvl higher first.

I've never heard that Provoke could actually lower your enmity. In any case, I've only been using it when I lose aggro, and then follow up with enmity generation (flash or rotation). It really confused me how I didn't get the instant red square that I was used to getting! Someone did tell me a few days ago that the enmity generated by Flash was related to your damage output, so I bought a weapon off MB with the highest physical damage I could practically get, then focused on HP. Looks like I may need to boost that some more.