Actually, there are enough arrows around to make a ranger character pretty useful from the second floor of act 1. Enemies keep dropping more.
Get the heal spell, and level that about once an act as required, but leave the rest of magic alone. Shaman magic does useful damage, but it costs too much mana. You'll drain your bar on the first encounter, and there are too many encounters.
Combat is pretty easy, even without Sharpened weapons, most enemies go down really quickly. That's another reason why magic isn't useful.
Traps can be useful, although they're really heavy, require you to stock up from the battlefields, and trainers can be hard to find. The Insect Swarm trap is excellent.
