Bow damage is actually surprisingly good. You can crit on bow hits, I forget which level that starts. But if you root something, you can kill it with your bow (you'll likely have to re-root) without taking any damage. You can also just wear it down and finish it off with melee, taking minimal damage.
If you want to conserve mana, use a root proc weapon (there are a lot of cheap ranger weapons with root procs, like the blade of the earthcaller). Swing till you get a root proc, run a few steps, turn off autoattack, and start shooting. It gets even better in Velious when quivers give bow haste.
For solo tactics, you can do the above, or just tank and spank, healing yourself up after the fight. Snare the mobs so that they can't move when they try to run away <20%.
Tracking is nice for soloing. You can cherry pick the mobs you want without running all over the place at random like most other classes.
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