[3.18] Bleed Pop Bow League Start Guide. Armour based mapper.

With this gear, farming T14-T16 maps and killing their bosses is a smooth experience. Bosses like shaper, elder, or the easier maven invitations are doable too. If you want to focus on bosses however you should think about getting another character specialised in that because bossing with this kind of build is not super effective.

POB: https://pastebin.com/5yRjnS4k

The difference between this version and the 15 ex version are Awakened gems as well as Forbidden Flesh/Flame with the Slayer Ascendancy Bane of Legends which gives us 10/20% more damage and immunity to reflect, so we can ignore phys reflect on maps. I also replaced flesh and stone and pride with herald of purity, blood and sand and grace, to boost our damage mitigation and damage further. Herald of Purity gets massive buffs from circle of guilt rings, which are therefore equipped. These rings, especially with decent implicits like vulnerability (which is mandatory) cost a lot of currency (10ex plus each). This version is however a super tanky (6k life, 78-79-78 res, 50k armour, 13k evasion, unbuffed) and fast mapper.

Mid-Juiced Map with this setup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_UMiXkRLwg

You can play for the first levels with Splitting steel and a 2H weapon, if you know this playstyle.
At Act 1 with bows you have 2 skills: Puncture and Split arrow.
ideally you have 2 3links (R-G-G and G-R-R)
Puncture-Maim-Chance to Bleed
Split Arrow-Pierce-Chance to bleed

You want to pick up any 4L rare with either 3G-1R or 2R-2G.
The links on a 4link should be
Puncture - Chance to Bleed - Vicious Projectiles-Brutality (Use Maim at first and replace Maim with Deadly Ailments if you have 3G-1R and with Brutality in Act4 if you have 2R-2G)
Split Arrow-Chance to Bleed - Vicious projectiles - Swift Affliction (or Brutality/Maim if you only get 2G-2R)

My recommendation is 3G-1R for Split Arrow and 2G-2R for Puncture.

To get enough dps, besides the 3L or 4L you want to have a quiver with physical damage to bows. You can use an essence on it if you find one.
Use:
Level 4: Serrated Arrow Quiver (1-4 Added Physical Damage with Bow Attacks)
Level 31: Blunt Arrow Quiver ((7-9) to (13-16) Added Physical Damage with Bow Attacks)
Level 61: Heavy Arrow Quiver ((12-16) to (24-27) Added Physical Damage with Bow Attacks)
For early mapping: Craft Heavy arrow quiver with Essence of Woe: Increased damage with bow skills on quiver (Big damage increase)

You want to craft bows with increased phys. This is a vendor recipe. You need a white bow, a blacksmiths whetstone and a magic or rare rustic sash. You can create an rare rustic sash with essences, so use your early essences for that and not orbs of alchemy.
I would pick the following bows:
Long Bow (lvl 9) 8-33 Phys or Composite Bow (lvl 14) 12-26 phys
Recurve Bow (lvl 18) 15-45 phys
Death Bow (lvl 32) 28-73 phys
[Sniper Bow Lvl 44] 32-96 phys
[Decimation Bow Lvl 53] 44-116 phys
Citadel Bow Lvl 58 36-144 phys

For early mapping use an essence of contempt (defeaning or shrieking) on a citadel bow, then craft increase phys if it has an open prefix. this should easily provide you with a better bow than arborix/Lioneyes Glare etc.

My recommendation is Determination-Pride-Defiance or War Banner and Blood and Sand after 2nd Lab (to be in sand stance so you get challenger charges during mapping and you are fast AF) at leaguestart. For other options check the POB.

After you completed the 10 Acts and 3 Trials you want to craft(or buy) a decent bow, buy a lioneyes vision and craft a Heavy arrow quiver, with the methods mentioned above.
You 4L the lioneyes vision and get a pseudo 5l for split arrow for it.
At this point, you will have a 4L puncture, which is not ideal but ok for white map bosses.

After that, you want to buy an ilvl 50 or higher (ideally ilvl 50-67) large cluster jewel with 8 or 9 passives to craft 3 out of 4: Iron Breaker, Master the FUndamentals, Force Multiplier, Battle Hardened. You can jagged fossil spam or harvest reforge phys for that. If the jewel base is super expensive, you can skip this step and the next step for later and use your skillpoints to get some life and damage on the ranger side of the tree.
You then buy 2 medium cluster jewels with increased physical damage over time or damage over time (4-5 passives, itemlvl 50 and above). You can craft the cluster jewels with harvest reforges until you get 2 good nodes (for example rend, circling oblivion or wasting affliction).

You should also check for 5l citadel bows and harvest 5links to get a 5l bow for puncture. 5l should be enough on a decent crafted bow even for low red maps. If you can afford, you can also 5l your lioneyes vision for the better clearing speed.

The next steps are a vulnerability on hit ring (reforge caster on a warlord ring to craft yourself) and ryslathas coil belt.

The next steps depend a lot on how expensive stuff is:
Maybe try to get a 6l bow, ideally with elder influence and essence spam t1 flat phys with the elder bleed mod and craft increased phys, replace the lioneyes vision with a better chestpiece, get an assailum helmet, buy/craft an hunter quiver with damage over time multiplier, there are a lot of options. Maybe check the builds on poe.ninja to get an idea what you could get next or post here and i will answer.