Started playing again recently and bought PoF for the mount. Been keeping up with dailies and working on story quests. It's great fun but it reminded me of why I took a break from it before.

My main thief is a level 80 thief and I've found that ever since I reached Straits of Devastation for the story guests, it's been getting really difficult to survive regular mobs, both out in the open and during the story quests. Is it normal for the difficulty to spike like that?

I've been dealing so far by basically dying and respawning until I kill whatever the objective is in the quest. For example, I recently bought PoF and during the first quest when you have to fight the two Forged Warhounds I'm pretty sure I died at least 5 times before I managed to whittle them down. Same with when I got HoT back then. I did the first quest to get the initial glider mastery and gtfo'd the area because my hp just melts when it's anything but a 1v1. I remember doing AC and even at lvl 80 my output just seemed neglible compared to everyone else's.

I've picked up some cheap exotic stuff from the TP (full Nika set, 2 usoku's needle, and an exotic staff from somewhere I don't remember, and back accessories), but they only help marginally. I expected thief to be squishy, but not this much. I make sure to dodge as much as I can, compensating with death blossom. Am I playing my thief wrong? Is there something I'm missing?