after a lot of research, i decided i could go to a set of 285/75/17 tires without having to touch the suspension. these are 33.8 inches tall and increased ground clearance by 1.1 inches over OEM, taking me to right at 10" of ground clearance.
i did that for two reasons - there are damn few choices for a 2nd gen to increase ground clearance, and my current tires were nearly bald. Texas requires an annual "safety inspection" and i was amazed my tires passed - they sure weren't going to pass again. This lets me push out suspension/lift work for a couple of years.
I would love bilstein 5100's, but they don't make them for my truck.
i bought a tuner, which I am very dissatisfied with; my next upgrades will be body armor, intake and exhaust work to free up the flow. I'm considering a larger throttle body and at least (real) dual exhaust with high flow cats and mufflers, possibly even (shorty) headers. Will eventually get headers in any case, but i realized there is benefit to be had in opening up the exhaust with the OEM manifolds.
though I'm just over 100K miles, the engine has been gone over and requires nothing. yet. the fire department I bought it from replaced the plugs, so that was one less thing to worry about. i got new front HD control arms, and I'm upgrading brakes as I go.