I just started playing less than 2 weeks ago during the middle of the month so I'm still relatively new. I'm level 44 right now (just now about to fight garuda story-wise) and basically only have thaumaturge leveled with 15 points in archer just for black mage. I've gotten through the game up to now only using gear from quests/dungeon drops, and I haven't even touched any of the disciple of the hand/land classes.

I'm asking because I noticed a pretty big difficulty spike recently, particularly in solo instanced battles that started about when I first went to Ishgard. There have been a few times where I got literally one-shot (steropes FATE, cutters cry chimera and some stone vigil bosses hurt a lot). I've just noticed other players around my level with blue/high quality items (an explanation on those colors would be helpful) and I'm wondering if I should have leveled other classes by now?