You could always go to the Lodestone and pull up your character's information to compare with someone of whom you know may already have gear that you are going to pursue sometime down the road. Use the XIVDB.com site to get your information or, if you have an iPhone, download "Libre Eorzea" and use that to research your gear.

And as Lemon8or said above, research some of the primal fight videos or even the dungeon ones. You could sit around and read the forums, but things are in a bit of disarray at the moment and most of the topics aren't particularly conveying much in the way of useful-game related information. Fun if you just want to do some light internet anthropology though.