Guild Wars 2

I know what’s coming, “don’t boost your first character and level it up so you can learn the game etc…” but I couldn’t help it, scrapper was the only profession that really got me hooked and playing something else just felt meaningless so… I went ahead and boosted an engineer. Right now I’m just doing a generic grenade engi build and I kinda have the hang of switching between 4 kits and my base weapon (holy sh** my fingers) but I’m having trouble getting the hero points I need to get to the scrapper.

I tried grinding in WvW but it seemed a bit slow, I tried doing the hp missions in the HoT map but they all seem to require certain skills (like the jumping mushroom thing) and to get them I had to clear the HoT story but I do like no dmg to the mobs and can only handle 1-2 at a time just in the open world, I barely managed to get glider basics.

Is the combat supposed to be this difficult when soloing or do I just suck at rotations? Is my free gear from the boost not good enough? (it is soldier tanky stuff) Tried to go to that city beside the guild hall since it had some hp missions but it’s walled off atm so… I’m stuck at this point and there’s no way I’m getting 220 (barely got 30) hero points from the main map 1 at a time.

Can anyone give me some tips on what I’m doing wrong or what the best course of action would be?
Thanks for reading!