>>96414705
Weapon mastery is pretty important. You get two.

>Shortbow: Vex, d6
if you hit, your next attack has advantage, which means you're rolling 2 d20s and taking the higher roll. It massively increases your odds of hitting and even getting a critical hit. And your hit that had advantage also make the next attack have advantage.
>Longbow: slow, d8
It lets you control enemy speed by reducing it by 10ft. If every enemy has 20 speed and you have 30, an enemy is never gonna catch you or your allies they can dash to get to you, but that means they spend their action moving instead of attacking and it's also one of the strongest ranged weapons
>sling: slow
The same as before, but this is bludgeoning instead of piercing which seldom matters, but it could.
>Heavy crossbow: push, d10
You need a feat to be able to make more than one attack per turn (not relevant till lvl 5), you can ask your DM to explain more about that, but being able to push an enemy is great, you can knock people away from you, push them away from allies, push people off of towers or over railings etc. and it deals the most damage of any ranged simple or martial weapon aside from fire arms.


With the colossus hunter ranger
>attack1: d10+d8+d6+dex
>attack2: d10+d6+dex
If you wanna be super versatile, take heavy crossbow for a weapon mastery, and scimitar with the archery fighting style.


>fire your crossbow as a main
>if an enemy comes into melee with you you can either blast people away with push and retreat
>or mark them with hunter's mark and make two attacks for 4d6+dex, more if you have colossus slayer