Well, you're viable in exotics (Orange). But if you want to get back into the swing of things:
If you have a Warrior, here are the vogue builds :
http://qtfy.eu/build/warrior. Especially for Condition PS. Pretty much no one will ever kick a decent Condition PS (CPS) from any party. Power PS will be easier to gear quickly though. The quickest way to be "viable" would just be to match these trait/skill sets pretty closely, even if you can't do the gear exactly right. Though in a non-group setting, PS builds are less useful. But it's a good starting point.
Edit: You'll have to play a bit of the expansion to fully unlock the Berserker Elite Spec. You'll need 25 Hero Points. You can find "trains" in the lfg pretty often.
"Is it still like at launch, where all of the top tier gear has an even spread of stats?". Yes. Just now that top tier is Ascended, not Exotic.
As for Ascended Gear. The "Viper" or "Sinister" gear for a condition class is a bit harder to obtain, especially in the case of Trinkets. It will involve playing the Living Story Season 3 maps or raiding in most cases. (There are ways to get them via PVP and WVW now too, but not necessarily any less time consuming)
As for armor and weapons...since you dont likely have any PVP/WVW/Fractal currency for the cheaper crafting options, you might have to craft them the old fashioned way. Luckily you have enough gold to do this pretty easily. Use gw2crafts.net to get your armorsmith/weaponsmith to level 500 for pretty cheap, and then you can craft whatever set you want. You may have to make a few trips to the trading post since you won't have gathered enough of the materials on your own, but it'll be doable.
Edit Edit: This is for PVE. For WvW I don't know what the vogue builds are, I'm guessing Maruaders but I don't really know. For PVP it doesn't matter, it's not based off your gear, but rather which "
Amulet" you equip.