You're basically past the point of worrying about anything that isn't a direct upgrade from what you're wearing, so ignore pretty much everything that doesn't have your preferred defensive stat on it or is a tiny high value item like belts, rings, amulets, currency, div cards, jewels, superior flasks and gems, and then fill space with the 3 color 3 link items that vendor for a chromatic but just the smaller things like knives and boots and such, never body armor or huge 2 handers.
The defensive stat you're looking for usually matches what area of the skill tree you're sinking your points around just so you know you always have the raw stats to equip the best gear, as in if you're getting a lot of dex get evasive items, a lot of strength get armor, a lot of int get energy shield. Hold ALT to see an item's base ilvl and tab your minimap around to see the info in the top right that tells you the ilvl of the monsters in the area. Try to keep your base item levels near to the content you're doing so your defenses and weapon damage don't fall too far off, but if the item has enough desirable rolls there's a lot of leeway there.
+ maximum life is probably the most important roll in general followed by resists. A ton of your damage comes from your skills and link # as opposed to needing to get a bunch of incremental added or % increased damage, so you don't need to value those stats super highly so much as making sure you always have a linked 4+ socket item for your main skill. Try to get a flask that buffs a defense type you aren't getting from your gear, 3000 evasion from a jade flask does little to change your avoidance when you already have 6000 evasion, but if you have like 200 because you're stacking armor then 3000 evasion is a huge boost. Always wear boots with the highest move speed you can find.
That should get you through the main story and keep you from compulsively picking up every rare. By the time you finish up you should also have a nice little stack of chromatics saved up and they are always in moderate demand because there's always a ton of end game players trying to get a very specific color combination on their shiny 6 socket end game items who will trade chaos for some chromes, and starter mapping build items usually only cost a chaos or 2.
