Thief Building!(help a noob)
Your main weapon should be the one that better fits your playstyle (that said, some sets need serious buff and rework like for example Pistol/Pistol which is a boring spam of 3, that doesn’t offers anything interesting despite how cool the looks are, and isn’t very damaging).
Your secondary set should always be the Shortbow. The Shortbow isn’t very good as a primary weapon, but it’s probably the best option you can pick for secondary weapon (your build should focus on what you’re doing with your main set). Shortbow helps you travelling faster, hittin AoE and triggering blast combo fields with the 2 skill (don’t detonate it, only the first stage is a combo finisher) whenever you want, as well as spreading poison and if investing in Deadly Arts, Weakness, whenever you want.
Now about your main weapon set, I currently use Pistol/Dagger (with focus on bleed duration on my equipment). It’s a very nice set, that despite being ranged, feels very comfortable at melee (in fact the main combo is using 5 with dagger, which is melee, to turn invisible, then using Pistol’s sneak attack to unload multiple bleeds). I recommend you to use it as currently is the set less affected by the constant crying for nerfs from other professions of all our builds, and is really powerful as you can find in some videos.
Of course the best thing for you would be to go to the PvP lobby, pick every available weapon for the profession and try them on the practice golems a bit to see which one makes you feel better while using it.
In PVE having an offhand Pistol and mainhand melee weapon is good too as you can permablind multiple opponents that won’t run from the smoke field (human players won’t stay there, so not as great in PVP).
The distribution that you’ve read seems to be veeeeeeery glass cannon (pure offense plus the 15 points on acrobatics for some extra dodge to avoid hits). Probably using Berserker’s Amulet too.
I don’t recommend it, specially if you’re starting. Even though there are some very skilled glass cannons, I spend a lot of time in PVP laughing at thieves building for it when I snare them for easy overkills. Glass cannons are very easy to counter and if you want to learn the game I recommend trying all kind of builds first.
I’m building for Support Thief (the Thief is very underrated as Support because there are so many glass cannons, when in fact the Thief is great at Support), and I can do greatly even when I’m alone, with many ways to survive a fight and while I don’t have a great direct burst, I can put great pressure on my opponents through bleeding.
You should play how you like, maybe you don’t like glass cannon, neither support, and still you would find your perfect build.
I also recommend to do at least some hours of PVE before jumping into PVP, because this game is very dynamic and you will need some time to feel comfortable with the playstyle.
For utilities, you should take the ones that favor you the most. We can’t tell you what you should do, it’s up to you and how you feel better. We can recommend you some playstyles, but there isn’t a full effective for every playr build.
A utility that I would strongly recommend is Shadow Reduge because it’s great for all kind of reasons (avoiding certain defeat, resurrecting allies, picking well defended skill points in PVE, avoiding some hard fights, confusing your opponents with clever use, etc…). I recommend you try it and I’m sure you will enjoy it in most builds. Just have in mind that you CAN’T go out of it while it’s active (because doing so will stop your invisibility), but once the area effect is over, you’re free to move around the map with 10 seconds of invisibility.
The equipment should be the one that makes you more comfortable. Of course there are some sets that doesn’t help the Thief too much, but you should find your best equipment by yourself.
About channeling combos, I’m not sure if you mean the use of initiative for skill chains, or using combo fields and combo finishers.
If you mean the first, there are some interesting chains. For Backstabbers using Assassin Signet + Steal (traited to do damage) + Cloak And Dagger (started before using Steal so the animation is finalized once Steal ends) + Backstab is a great chain. For Pistol/Dagger using 5 whenever you can and then using Sneak Attack is a good combo too.
If you mean proper combos, as I said the Shortbow is great for Blast Finishers (the best kind of Finisher), and you can find some good combos like Dagger/Pistol using Black Powder (Smoke Field) and then Heartseeker (Leap Finisher) to become invisible.
About the camera, I don’t know how to help you, I prefer it this way bacause when I’m in combat I’m already in tension and it doesn’t feel unnatural to hold that button.
I hope I can help you a bit, but as I said, you should try many different things until you find the build that best suits you.