Tin Foil Hat Hearer »—> Ranger Extraordinaire »—> “Be like water…”
ranger build
The longbow, at least as it stands now, is a utility weapon, plain and simple. You can be effective with it, you can get it to hit hard if you build glass and incorporate it into a combo that involves your pet (e.g. RF + QZ + jaguar/raven crit), and in some places/situations it’s indispensable (e.g. for stunning the legendary rampaging ice elemental in the dredge fractal), but for general, all-purpose use, the shortbow’s just the better bow.
If you have to have it, equip a shortbow on swap so that you still have a means to output consistent dps when you’ve used up all of the longbow’s skills and can’t maintain max range. Build-wise, stat primarily for power/precision/critical damage while leaving room for toughness and vitality so you don’t get killed by a strong gust of wind. Not much else to it, I think, but maybe someone else will have more to add.