Basically you need to "prepare" for the expansion.
Imo you gotta finish the story line, (you will unlock some dungeons from there) so you won't have to worry about it in HW.
Expert/High roulette will be your main poetics gain so yea you should unlock them too.
Syrcus Tower is after CT and drops i100 armors and oils of time-sands of time so you can upgrade soldiery gear but you can skip through that and go to World of Darkness straight away (minimum ilvl is 90) but u gotta beat ST first to unlock it.
I wouldn't recommend going after relic weapon at the moment. You are propably in atma stage and there are 5 upgrades after that which all are time-gil consuming. So go for poetics weapon.
Assuming you spam WoD for i120 armor and cap your weekly poetics you should be able to reach i120 when hw is released which is ok. You can still gear up from Final coil (t10-13) but minimum ilvl for t13 is i125 and as a tank you need to have most left parts i130 to handle the damage.
Welcome back btw!!!