Ffxi strafe

I really want to like this game. I got it on the sale a couple of weeks ago, and have been trying to get the hang of it, but I'm failing miserably. I've sucked at many mmos over the years from EQ, FFXI, EVE, SWTOR and most recently FFXIV, which I unsubbed for this since the endgame is a bit repetitive. Yay, lets kill the same guy again, but this time it will be harder.
So, I've got an 11 engineer and I'm absolutely stuck in celestion. Everything kills me, and I can't get the hang of the combat mechanics. I figured I'd leave the WASD setup stock, but its really strange compared to e.g. tf2 or any other fps, even though it looks like you'd treat the combat more or less the same. Red shit on floor, move out of the way and stay pointed toward the enemy whilst firing away. My gear is whatever I've picked up along the way, but I can't find any stat guides that I can figure out, probably because I'm dumb.
Is Engi the wrong class for a noob? It looks like there's a lot of flexibility with classes, but the more I read, engi looks more and more like a tank, which isn't a class I normally play.
Is there some mechanic that I'm missing? It seems like as soon as multiple mobs show up there's no way to avoid their telegraphs, and I wind up dead.
Should I go back to the previous maps, complete everything, and be overlevelled for this one?
Should I remap the keys to a more traditional WASD? I.E. A and D are strafe left and right.
Does gear matter all that much at this low of a level? I've wrecked the PVE in every other game I've played up until about 1/2 of level cap completely ignoring gear specifics. Just use whatever you pick up along the way.
Are there any good guides out there? Everything I can find are from release time and I'm not too sure of the accuracy.
Thanks in advance to those that bother answering. I'm frustrated and the game looks good enough that I don't want to rage quit.

Warning: Incoming wall-of-text
With all the 2.1 changes, I've been rather active reading lots of the forums lately. Over the past few days, in various different threads, both on here, as well as other forums, I've seen a lot of terrible UI and Hotkey setups posted, and I'd like to post some things, because I found most of these tips to be extremely useful for me, and allowed me to play at a much higher level, and much more precisely.
My main job is PLD, so that's what I am going to cover for the topic of this post, however, I'd be more than happy to share some shots of my other classes (BRD, SCH, and BLM) if anyone likes what they see or is looking for some suggestions.
I dabbled in WoW, but didn't play for very long, FFXI was my first, and longest MMO, so most of my MMO experience pre-FFXIV was played WITHOUT using the mouse to turn, as in FFXI, you used the numpad to control your camera and movement. While leveling up PLD, and the early stages of being a level 50, I had a pretty sub optimal UI setup, that looked a lot like this:
http://imgur.com/9UWCKJO
I have pretty large hands, but even I have trouble being able to move reliably with WASD and being able to press the number 6/7 and beyond, let alone WASD + CTRL/ALT + 6/7 and beyond. What this lead to, was me often times, having to click abilities to activate them. Suffice to say this worked for things like CM/AK/Prae, and even Ifrit/Garuda, but I started to notice it felt like it was really hampering my ability. A friend of mine, who was formerly a Gladiator in PvP for WoW, gave me some pretty big tips that helped immensely.
First off, this is the new UI/Hot key setup I use on PLD:
http://i.imgur.com/8KOXdy5.jpg
Notice how every (useful) ability that might need to be used during the heat of battle or while moving, is bound to an easy to press key, while being able to stay home at WASD. The NumKey binds are bound to my Razer Naga mouse, and on all jobs, I use it for mostly Buffs, and on SCH I use it for my DoT's, Bane, Ruin, etc. The 3rd hotbar is bound to Shift 1-4 which I find to be a lot more comfortable than CTRL or ALT + 1-4. The rest of the buttons are bound to keys right around WASD or Shift variants of them, again, making them easy to fire while in motion, and without having to go "Searching" on your bar to click the ability.
The only actions on that bar that aren't bound to a realistic hotkey, are Raise (which I dont even have active a lot of the time as a cross class) and my stance.
This will mean you will have to remap some of the games internal UI short-cut features, but they take up extremely valuable hot-key real estate on the keyboard, and the benefits are too large to pass up for the inconvenience.
Along with this, those of you that use the "normal" control scheme, and seem to have trouble dodging AoE's, or have trouble dodging an AoE + firing a skill, this tip will help a lot. Go into your keybinds, go into the movement section. By default, A and D are bound to Turn Left and Turn Right, respectively. Go ahead and remove those keys binds. Thats right. You do not need turn left or right bound, at all. Go ahead and remap strafe left from Q to A and strafe right from E to D. "But, but, how the hell do I turn?". Easy. You use the mouse.
Playing with my right mouse button clicked down almost constantly was a pretty big adjustment for me, as well as no longer key board turning, and I will be honest, felt pretty awkward for a day or two. After a week or two, I really started to feel way more "in control" of my toon, and now, after a month and a half with this setup, I can honestly say, this alone has been probably the single biggest reason for an improvement in my play.
Trust me when I tell you that if you are currently using the keyboard to turn, you can raise your dodging and overall playing proficiency by A LOT by getting accustomed to playing this way. If this gets any interest, I will be happy to take shots of my other UI's, and be happy to answer any questions or take any advice anyone else out there may have.
P.S. Another quick Tidbit. If you play multiple classes that have similar abilities, always bind them to the same key. Example: If you have stun bound to E on your PLD, then you should use E as your stun key across all your jobs. This just helps with muscle memory and makes it easier to change classes on the fly.
edit: i accidentally a word

I have played only one MMO for any real long-term period, that was FFXI and I mained as a RDM. I also played WHM, SCH, BLM, BLU and a little of DRK. I got my MNK to a whopping level 15 back then. I was all about mages but after years and years of it, I was burned out on Mage classes so I decided I'd play around with PGL/MNK in FFXIV. Clearly the mechanics in FFXI and FFXIV ARR are super different. I did own FFXIV 1.0 but, my computer died not long after it came out and I couldn't get a new one in a reasonable timeframe so never really played 1.0 much at all.
When I jump on Monk about 80-90% of the time this is my thoughts:
I have made a terrible mistake.
I have only gotten to level 31 so I am no where near endgame, I have lots of time to learn more, I am aware of my shortcomings in playing this job/class.
I was having a terrible time of movements out of AOE range (cone/circles) but figured out how to strafe better and that running backwards is too slow to get out of the way of the AOE circles (noob not to know i'm sure). I have gotten 100 fold better but still have a lot of work to do. Now I have problems with understanding Rotation and which is optimal, and making sure I am in the correct position in relation to the mob for optimal Damage per hit according to the skill being used.
I have been reading and reading and reading threads everywhere I can, as well as watching video after video on what rotations should look like and what will give the best DPS for the job. Maybe I over did it but, now I am so unsure that I'll ever be able to be an efficient DPS that I have stopped leveling it in favor of a much easier Class.
Botany.
Problem is, Botany won't get me to endgame so now I'm not sure what to do. I love playing monk. I love beating things up. I don't mind long duty finder queues because I use that time to craft and farm (I farm mats for myself and my hubby to craft with which gives me its own satisfying feeling of I helped someone else out today).
Tell me that as you level up and aquire more of the required skills for Monk rotation nailing all the Buffs/AOE rotation/DPS rotation GL Stacks etc etc etc becomes clearer? I feel like if it did there wouldn't be so many threads floating out there asking "am I doing my rotation correctly?".
Maybe my insecurity and fears of rage quitters, impatient people who are just farming endgame dungeons, and holier than thou elitists come endgame who won't have the patience to understand that everyone does a job for the first time, at some point and needs time to learn to do it correctly and efficiently, and aren't willing to help me out with that are just getting the best of me.
I just wonder if it is a better choice to just pick up a healing class and stick with what I know even though I'm enjoying Monk or if I should stick it out On Monk, meanies be damned.
Sorry for the LONG post, and thank you to anyone who got this far, and read it all. I just needed to air it all out somewhere and since my hubby is a fabulous gamer at anything he seems to try, and I tend toward the suckage but play just because it is fun to do so no matter how bad I am at things he just wouldn't understand. :-/
/rant

Is there a way to make wasd keys behave more like the 8462 keys in FFXI? When I'm tanking and the mob readies an AOE or Cone move, I am finding it fastest and simply run straight through the mob to get out of range. Where my normal inclination is to strafe or run away.
It takes a while to turn my character using the a&d keys, and the s key makes me walk backwards at half speed. In XI, in 3rd person view, the back keys would literally turn your character around and make him run at normal speed. I can't seem to figure out how to do something similar in XIV.
It could be a little tougher to control the camera since I used the keyboard exclusively in XI, but a simple key to put the camera directly behind my character could fix the camera issue easily.
Thanks in advance.