Interesting points in this thread. I guess it does shed a little light on things. I hadn't thought of leveling a different job on the same toon, which I guess can account for lagging behind the ilvl curve. Doing the MSQ, your gear gets upgraded automatically, just by doing the quests. But that obviously won't happen if you've already done those quests.

Still, though, my alt job is BLM. It's at level 50. Though I don't get MSQ upgrades on that job, I still go to the market board and purchase gear to keep up every couple levels or so. So, I dunno. You should be able to keep up.

As for not having i290 gear when you hit 70, there's no excuse for that. I just dinged 70 last night, and the first thing I did instinctively was the level 70 job quest. I got a full set of antiquated gear and then went to the market board to get some pieces that weren't included in the set. I'm now at ilvl 293. All set for Ala Mhigo! Looking forward to wrapping up SB.