When you are ready for your Brigand to not suck, you will do all of the following things (you may be doing some of them already, and some of them have been mentioned):
MC weapon (s) or Frostfell equivalent, adorned with Vampiric handle(s) to drain life.
MC poisons.
Pull solos with Stamina hex doll for amazing physical mitigation debuff.
Lock combat exp because your achievement point : adventure level ratio is not good right now. Quest like a fiend and you will reap the rewards, and still level. If you just zoom up in levels, you will be weak in every way.
Get Walk the Plank, and set up your CA's to follow a logical progression of keeping the mob facing away from you & stunned long enough for you to cycle through all of your back attacks.
Every time you level, go out and max your defensive and offensive skills on gray or green mobs before you attempt to tackle any new content.
Consider Wisdom line for Fencer - I used it from about level 22 till level 70, and it really enhanced my survivability.
Make a long-term plan with respect to your Achievement Point placement - I basically went Agility to get Walk the Plank maxed, then added to STR for crits... *UNTIL* I had enough points to get to the endline Wisdom ability, and then I dropped STR to go Fencer. At level 70, I had 20 points banked, and dropped Fencer to dual wield, and picked up Agility and Intelligence to endline (FD for the win), and put the rest back into STR for the crits again.
At level 32 you should be a freakin monster - you just got into a whole new tier of gear & poisons, plus at 30 you got a 4-second stun. When you set up your CA's the right way, most solo mobs should be 50-100% DEAD by the time you've cycled through them once.
Edited to summarize what happened: You rolled up an alt and expected to play using the same playstyle that worked for you in the past - however, due to the changes in leveling, you are now gaining levels about twice as fast, and so your skills & AP: adv. level ratio are suffering. This is getting you killed.