I think my gear is not up to par because pulling the entire cast of mobs to the 2nd fish infested hallway would get me killed. Am I striving for the wrong set of gear to begin with? I currently have AF gear from the job quests. My head armor is better (vermilion) and my waist is darklight.

Sometimes people tell me my gear is too low but is there something between these 2 I could quest or buy?
Basically before the circular room pulling both fish and tonberry seems like it always puts the whm under stress of a high dmg spike.
As I'm writing this I'm thinking that I probably should conserve the big def buffs for this section and maybe hitting the instawrath to get the first of three mobs down as fast as possible.