About the gear rewards from quests... it's not like in WOW where quest rewards are unique and quite good and you end up replacing most of your gear every other level, the only rewards you get are the same as standard-quality stuff you can either craft yourself or just buy from NPCs. Pretty much every hub zone has an NPC who sells level-appropriate NQ gear, but the gear curve is pretty low so if you get any drops from dungeons they're usually good for 5-10 levels anyway.

The only time you ever get anything genuinely unique from quests is at levels 45 and 50 when you get your job-specific armour set, and you get given the entire set anyway with no need to pick and choose. The rest of the time you're basically just choosing whichever piece of vendor trash you've replaced least recently, and you can just buy everything else from a vendor stood nearby anyway.