Ranger PvE — First Quiver

You've just hit 45. The bow is the one the story handed you, the armour is whatever Draupnir has dropped so far, and you have exactly 30 stigma points. That's fine. A Ranger's numbers come from its skill levels long before they come from gear, and this version spends everything on getting three skills to 16 in your first week: Deadshot, Snipe and, one level behind them, Gale Arrow.

16 is where each of them changes. Snipe gets the Tempest Arrow follow-up and keeps taking a second off Deadshot on every hit, so your basic shot is now what brings your big shot back. Deadshot at 16 unlocks its extra hit; here you keep faster drawing and drawing on the move instead, because at this stage you'll be dodging more than standing still. Gale Arrow stops at 15, so it keeps its longer buff for now and picks up the ten-second cooldown cut the day it reaches 16.

Reset your skills when you hit the cap; it's free. Twelve skills to 10 costs 252 points, about what your levels and the district quests give you by now. Spend them in this order and leave everything else at 1.

The bar is already the full one: hold Snipe, hold the macro, hold Deadshot. The difference this week is MP. Tempest Shot costs mana on every cast and you don't have much yet, so when the bar runs dry, let go of the macro for a second and let Snipe fill you back up; every Snipe hit gives MP back.

Drill Dart only fires within a few seconds of one of your crits, which is why it can sit in the macro without doing anything at the start of a pull. Your first crit wakes it up. Marking Shot's Precision gives you 300 Critical Hit for 15 seconds, so open with it and the problem mostly goes away.

Those levels cost exactly the 30 points you have. Every stigma shard after this goes into Vaizel's Authority first.

Once the Bakarma set is complete and your item level passes about 1,400, Urugugu Canyon and Vakron Sky Island open, and the Vakron set and Aulamus Bow that drop there are the Marked Target version of this build. Liberator jewellery has fixed stats, so stop it at +5 and keep your Kinah for Aulamus.