These comments are not complete, nor as thorough as those that Krald posted elsewhere, and are now presumed lost.
I preferred to take scout first, then druid, so I had better evasion skills and better weapon skills in the early druid levels.
Rangers are among the most versatile classes, and it helps a great deal to take advantage of this. Multi-classing is very important, especially if you solo. A young ranger should take mage through level 9 to be able to cast ice/flame/energy attack I on himself. Changing the arrow's damage from physical to elemental can help a lot with some mobs. (Later, some mobs will be immune to elemental attacks , and you must use physical on them. And vice versa.)Then later, mageto 36 tomaster the level 18 multi-cast ability; you will also haveperfect spell which guarantees a spell hitting.
Cleric/Healer is also important, so you can cast augmentation spells, such as the Gifts,heal using the Revitalize and Instant lines, and be able to resurrect. Healer goes up faster in Augmentation and Life, but has weaker armor.
Kiting is possible, but not really worth the time and effort. What is important are roots and stuns. Roots to keep adds back until you finish the current baddie, and stuns to prevent any action for two or ten seconds. Thunder Cloud, Shocking Blast, Root, Patch of Bramble, Thunder Storm, all have their uses, and experimenting will be fun. Note that you can chain nature spells, so you can use both Lightning StormI and II for example. You may find tho that the weaker version is more frequently evaded by the mob, so the advantage is less great than it may sound.
Obviously you need to keep your armor, jewelry,and bow current and teched.
Strength helps determine damage. A craft that increases strength such as armorer (9/level) and fitter (10/level) are helpful if you keep them near your Ranger level as Ranger only gets 6/level.
I would suggest not eliminating scout. You get Long Shot from Scout, which can be a good pull tactic when in a group.
I puta few training points into Bow, to allow me to use the higher bows asap. (Winding up with 10 points of bow/level instead of 9). I put a little into nature, to use certain teched spells, and quite a bit into evasion and magic evasion.
I enjoy Ranger, it seems to be one of the most complete classes, and allows considerable scope for individual variation. After I reached 100, (with 47? Healer and 36 mage) I started Spiritist, which seems like a reasonably good match. But there is much room for differing choices here. And I expect to increase Healer a bit more.