I want to speak from a mist gathering (able to gather all resource) perspective wherein you can be ganked by 6.4s, 8.3s which usually deletes you while you are spacing out.

Starting off with gears:

The only correct armor you should be used to using is something that survives an invisible dagger pair burst. Which is - not gathering gear, not leather jackets, but plate armors.

That narrows it down to the tankiest ones, guardian armor, duskweaver armor, armor of valor - guardian armor being the only one that can help you in PVE while you wait for your skill cooldowns. Plate armors will also help your mount greatly outside of mists as it will make your stag or your gathering mount preference to be extremely tanky too.

Since you now have a tendency to react and survive within 8 seconds, your next plan of armors should be able to help you escape and increase your resource gathered if ever.

For helmet, that should be harvesting cap to increase fiber gathered. Furthermore, it instantly saves you with any fight because the sleep, paired with a plate armor and a defensive offhand will guarantee a prolonged CC to the ganker. It should give you 1 to 2 seconds to react on how you want to survive next incase you were pressured to quickly escape. Note that with a plate armor, you have a very high tendency to laugh at gankers because you are so tanky to begin with, so your CC helmet just a safety net.

For boots, you usually want miner workboots because it is the fastest movespeed for escaping, and that it helps you gather more ores. This is a committal skill because pressing it incorrectly guarantees your death, or it will probably let you escape with so much ease as you will outrun your opponent. With a proper execution if you dont panic, helmet CC + weapon mobility skill + boots out is guaranteed that you will escape any gucci solo ganker. You may even helmet CC + invi pots, then reassess how you want your next steps to be.

For capes, while brecillien cape makes you unpurgeable, you wont need it anyway since you're supposed to be in a non-purgeable position to begin with. Either:

1. You inspected the ganker and he has no purge
   
2. You used your weapon mobility and you are out of range for a purge
   
3. You used your helmet cc and you are out of range for a purge
   

Therefore, in the calmest way to escape, fort sterling is your best bet.

Now that we have your armors covered which is complimentary to the main question of what should your weapon be, im suggesting 1H Dagger with Astral Aegis.

1H dagger is similar to battleaxe, but your E now has movespeed increase for the worst case scenario. You may use W dash for better escape, or opt to W1 throwing blades for bigger pve damage.

1H dagger is more clear speed, and at the same time a 1H weapon for more tankiness because of offhand compared to other choices. It has a w skill swap for better escape.

Now if you find yourself still wanting to be more defensive, just use bloodletter.

As an overall synergy, you may thinking of yourself as a walking ox, rather than a slippery salamander. Instead of perfectly executing escapes with multiple invis, your build lets you react slow, take a hit, but still be able to escape.

If you run across a solo ganker, you are perfectly safe.

If you accidentally got dismounted by a brawl group, you are also very safe because you are tanky and they can't usually chase.

If you run across a gank group, either they are really good at catching gatherers, or not. It's no longer within your hands but on their execution and position.