New guy trying to wrap my head around jobs in this game...

[Estellios]

Up to date level-wise. Make sure your gear is at or very near your level, if you get more than several levels above it and the required/optimal level text greys out, it's time to get new gear. This is especially true for crafting tools. Getting a higher level tool you should see a noticeable difference in the difficulty of items that were giving you a lot of trouble previously.

"Dated" items are items that were made with old recipes before the crafting reform. Their stats are generally not as good as non-dated items and you can't attach materia to them, so you want to try and get non-dated gear as much as possible, but there is nothing wrong with using dated gear.

[Raldo]

What Estellios said. It is worth noting that some "dated" gear is actually superior to non-dated gear in some cases, though usually not for very many levels. The main one that comes to mind is the Dated Velveteen Wedge Cap -- highest all-DoH craftsmanship hat for four levels.

[Dawiichan]

What do you mean keep you equips up to date... Cuz half my stuff says 'dated'

Dated means that they are items created before the materia patch. Pretty much we'll get to keep them until SE takes them out. I wouldn't be surprised if that'd be soon either because with job gear coming soon, dated gear won't be used as high-end gear anymore(hopefully).

[Conradus]

Dated means that they are items created before the materia patch. Pretty much we'll get to keep them until SE takes them out. I wouldn't be surprised if that'd be soon either because with job gear coming soon, dated gear won't be used as high-end gear anymore(hopefully).

I expect that any dated gear in existence will not be tampered with. You already can't obtain them from as rewards or from vendor NPCs (except for dated accessories, because their replacements haven't been fielded yet). In the coming months, the synthesis recipes for them will be retired and crafters won't be able to make them any more either (you already can't get any new materials for the old-fashioned dyes required to make a lot of them). At that point the dated items will slowly disappear as they are converted to materia, sold to NPCs, or their owners quit the game.

[Dawiichan]

I expect that any dated gear in existence will not be tampered with. You already can't obtain them from as rewards or from vendor NPCs (except for dated accessories, because their replacements haven't been fielded yet). In the coming months, the synthesis recipes for them will be retired and crafters won't be able to make them any more either (you already can't get any new materials for the old-fashioned dyes required to make a lot of them). At that point the dated items will slowly disappear as they are converted to materia, sold to NPCs, or their owners quit the game.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I do believe Yoshi-P said dated gear will eventually be phased out.

[Conradus]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I do believe Yoshi-P said dated gear will eventually be phased out.

Yes. I believe my previous statement is what he meant. They aren't going to want to interfere with items people already possess, but once no more can be created, the ones in existence will gradually disappear through natural attrition.

[Bahn]

"Dated" items are items that were made with old recipes before the crafting reform. Their stats are generally not as good as non-dated items and you can't attach materia to them, so you want to try and get non-dated gear as much as possible, but there is nothing wrong with using dated gear.

I would add a HUGE caveat to your second sentence though. There's a lot of Dated gear that fills "holes" left behind with the reformed non-dated gear. Without dated gear there would be certain level gaps in between levels that you simply cannot fill with the current stuff. I can't think of anything offhand that's great for low level synthers that you can wear on your legs (Dated Cotton Tights, for example). I would personally hang onto the Dated gear and make absolutely sure that you have something else that can fill the role - I don't think necessarily all the reformed gear are that much better than their dated counterparts, and some of them have level/class restrictions that the Dated stuff didn't have.

Hopefully with newer patches they fill in these "holes" and class/level requirement discrepancies with the reformed stuff.

[Estellios]

It's mostly true at lower levels, but you do have a point. With the changes to stats while wearing non-optimal, non-favored gear, though, I don't see level/class requirements a hindrance at all, except maybe costing you an inventory slot.

They seem to be working on fixing that issue since one of the goals of the next patch is to add more lower level gear and gear rewards to low level leves/quests.