Hi there.
I'm a R30 RR45 WH, so everything I say can and should be ignored if you're looking for advice from people who actually know the class at max level and decent gear. I'd just like to share my two cents.
I'll refer to this part of the question: "Also, is the WH really that weak", as I don't know of the owners' plans and/or whether making a strong soloroaming class would largely be undesirable for the bigger picture.
I've done the same thing you did. Before I made the class, I browsed the forums.
Surely people must ask for nerfs for this class, after all I remember it being quite potent in live and it looked like great fun.
Oh lawdy. People do NOT like this class. I'll never be taken to a City, literally every other class does their job better than I do mine, I'm squishy, etc. - my personal favorite which gave me a good chuckle: "WH is the 4th best mdps class in a game where each faction only has 3 mdps classes"
That being said, I did not care. People will always find a way to whine on Forums, I've never really been interested in the Meta aspect of things and I get a hat and all skill names were named by an edgy 12 year old, what's not to like?
So I started my journey, T1 was, as expected, a pain at first. At level 10 it was great, soloroaming in the RvR lake and getting giddy with each and every ridiculous xp reward per person (thanks, AAO). Could also go toe to toe with most (if not all) mdps classes and tanks even if I didn't get the drop on them. Great fun for that alone.
Level 16 was, as expected, humbling in oRvR. Alright, time to join the hivemind and leech uh I mean contribute to the war effort. Did that for a while, then did a few Scenarios, and let me tell you, T2-3 scenarios on a WH are actually quite fun. Surprisingly, there are no full sov people with infinity toughness and armor in T2-3, go figure. Everything melts if you get the drop, there are always stragglers, in most decent scenarios there's more than one objective you can pick solo people off of and you can always leisurely walk towards their healers while each faction's dps is having fun hitting their respective enemy's SnB tanks. You can even fight as a main line dps if it must come to that assuming the healers decide to grace you with their attention now and again. You're also great at playing the various objectives. Turns out not being seen when running to an objective is quite helpful. There's great fun in sneakily capturing the flag in Blackfire Basin while destro is off trying to inflate their damage numbers near your spawn for no apparent reason.
I also did this weird thing called making friends in MMOs, namely another lowbie WH. So we decided to duo roam, both around level 20ish. Much to our utter surprise, we were able to actually kill solo players, R40s no less! Well surely they must all have been wearing literal tatters. Much to our even utter-er surprise, a quick armory check revealed that those were conq, vanq, even one semi-invader geared guy. Whether they were just horrible players I do not know, lord knows the two of us weren't (and still aren't) masters of this class.
Moving forward to R29, I'm in full t3 RvR with the SC weapons and I'm actually able to quite effectively pick people off solo, even those with better gear. There's always a destro zerg running around in one form or another, and always, ALWAYS there's some slacker running behind. And if the stars align and said slacker hasn't been graced with divine armor and weaponry by the lords of chaos themselves (and their class name isn't getaway artist aka shaman) usually that means that they'll die, and I'll squeal like a little schoolgirl at all the delicious RP and XP I just got from that. If they don't die, there's at least just as much of a chance that I at least won't die, either. For the record, those people, some of them 40s, didn't always "melt" due to my sheer dps output at level 29 (unless they were equipped roughly equally), obviously. But they died, and they died before I was dead. I think this is very reasonable considering my gear level.
For the record, this is not my first class on RoR, and it most certainly isn't my first character in Warhammer Online as a whole, and by comparison with regards to my usefulness solo I felt like the WH was "semi-"viable *much* earlier than other classes (though I would assume the same goes for WE, which I haven't played).
With regards to viability in a warband, oh yes, it's dreadful, no question there. You get your occasional ego boost whenever you move in through a postern and are able to outskill those chumps on the oil in a honorable 1v1 duel while 4 healers curse the day they made their characters and spamheal that one shitty WH who just HAD to attack that sov Mara.
That being said: From my very personal perspective, regardless of whether the WH is balanced in the bigger picture, since you said you're okay with looking pretty and having an incredibly fun to play 1v1 class, I'd say go for it. Bonus points for grouping up with other WHs and sharing the fun. In my opinion this is even more viable now that you can get royal crests from oRvR bags, this hasn't been the case earlier. So if you don't *like* Cities (I'm pretty indifferent myself, even having played classes that conform to the meta much more than the WH) you don't have to play cities to ever reach endgame gear.