Monk slump

I've been taking a break from my WHM play to try out other classes. The first one I picked up was Pugilist, I loved it from the get go. Problem I'm facing, around level 25, is that I just feel hopelessly weak. I feel like it takes forever to drop foes even regular mobs my level. My weapon is just the basic stuff since I don't have any quests I can pull rewards from so I'm not sure if that's it or not but the one I'm wearing is level appropriate.

Is it my gear or am I just in a level range where I should be expecting to struggle with this class?