Gear: aesthetics, stat boosts
Skill: situational awareness, proper timing, ability use, rotations, etc.

As far as I'm concerned, the problem is not that the game will be gear-centric. It won't be. It'll be nice to obtain pieces, but with the crafting system being brought along hand-in-hand, this simply won't be the case. As I stated above, that is how I've seen gear in any MMO I've played. When you provide challenging content skill can be introduced. This game... FFXIV... it has no challenging content. There's no... difficult mechanics available to us yet, and understandably so. The system isn't finished.

Anyway, after reading this thread it became clear to me that the focal point is wrong. Content, objectives, etc. will dictate skill involvement. Doesn't matter if gear makes you uber, or skills make you uber, if the content is easy as hell, it's not going to be fun or challenging on either side of the coin. Just my two cents on the subject.