I feel your pain. I have a massive amount of characters, so some were bound to be tryhard, but I had a phase where I used Pursuers. Pursuers of all things. And one where I used a Darkmoon Blade Falchion. I've never used TWoP, but only because I can't use it properly. But yes, it's a sad spiral where you just get ganked one too many times and decide there's no other way.
My solution was to have tryhard gear on hand and if I invaded a gank squad, switch to that, but otherwise have some fun. Another thing I did though, as a bit of an excuse, was become an avid RTSR user - which is theoretically a high-risk, high-reward playstyle, but in reality is pure fun all the time.