Astral Ring and Cassie Earring off the top of my head. But that's not much of a list.

FFXI had an endless slew of sidegrades and situational gear that either relieved your inventory (by introducing gear that converged multiple pieces of gear into one) or burdened your inventory (by introducing pieces of gear that could each be useful in different situations). It's a good way to add longevity to content, but a bad way to give players a sense of character progression.

An FFXI MNK in 2005 and an FFXI MNK in 2010, given a choice of optimal gear, are not as statistically different as you might think. What changed over time was player understanding of game mechanics, techniques and styles of play independent of any great statistical growth. We became cleverer, not stronger. Remember how Kirin took 30+ minutes to kill with BLMs and RNGs in 2005? We could have applied 2008's melee burn strategy just as well back in 2005--if we knew how to gear our characters then. I still remember STR/ACC MNK back in the day. We were so dumb then.

Anyway, all that sidegrading provides a fantastic illusion of growth and motivates people to do content, which is fine in the short term. Maybe 1-1.5 year cycles of sidegrade content. The problem with FFXI was sidegrading became the law of the land as soon as the level cap hit 75 and remained so until the cap raised again 8 years later. I can imagine how this would be very discouraging to a player who didn't buy into the illusion.

FFXIV can't be afraid of making older gear obsolete if they want to elicit from players a genuine feeling of character growth. I think they are on the right track when it comes to handling obsolete gear, though. We can already trade in primal weapons and Darkhold gear for GC seals. These items may be obsolete for some players, but they aren't worthless. Squenix should have a redemption plan for all content rewards after a certain amount of time as they push forward to create new content and more powerful gear.