I would not jump too heavy into crafting this early unless you just want to and enjoy it. You dont need to craft your own gear. You will be running lots of dungeons that drop enough gear to keep you going. If you end up with a really out leveled piece, you can check the market board and fill that gap. Given your main is gladiator, Ill tell you what classes you need:

Gladiator becomes Paladin at level 30. In order to unlock paladin however, you need Gladiator at level 30 and Conjurer at 15. Once those two things are done the quest will become available to unlock the paladin job. Every Job in the game has 2 classes that they can use cross class abilities from. For paladin that is Conjurer and Marauder. To access all of the cross abilities for paladin you need Conjurer at 34 and Marauder at 26. You dont need them at that level right now though. The most important cross skills are probably Foresight (marauder level 2), Bloodbath (Marauder level 8), Stoneskin (conjurer level 34), and Mercy Stroke (Marauder level 26). The 5th cross ability can either be Fracture (Marauder level 6) or Raise (Conjurer level 12) or you could just use cure (conjurer level 2) for some extra heals for soloing or something. Paladin has it pretyt easy though, you can level all the way to 60 and do just fine with Marauder at level 8 and Conjurer at 15. Foresight and Bloodbath are the only two cross abilities Id say you really want to get, and they can be gained in literally less than an hour. Get your marauder to 8, get your conjurer to 15 to unlock paladin, and then you can level paladin straight to 60.