New ranger needs some non-build advice

I need some advice on how to choose... anything. Yes, everyone said pick by your play style. But what does that mean?

I've comb through many builds and have accumulated most of the attack gems and some of the support and aura gems. I played around a bit both on the combinations of gems and the passive tree. I find myself constantly switching around the attack gems and not really falling in love with any.

Pack-clearing gem set include: lesser-multi, faster, and fork. They seem to work okay independent of what attack gems I use. (Only have 4 green links at the moment.)

Single target gem set include: add-cold and cold penetration. It seems to be lacking, especially vs bosses) no matter what attack gem I put in.

Passive currently snake down to Iron Reflexes and left to Iron Grip and Blood Magic, focusing on Life, Life steal, Life on hit, and evasion. (It was based on an old Lightning Arrow build, I gathered it isn't popular these days.)

Gears are nothing to write home about but mostly focus on evasion, and life on hit.

I find lightning arrow great at clearing but firing cost is really high and I have to hold back constantly.

Split arrow and rain are not very effective.

Explosive arrow and poison arrow's delay is quite foreign and I'm not comfortable with them. Ended up wasting a lot of shots waiting for them to completely apply their damage.

Ice shot and burning arrow are good but not too special.

Given that, what am I looking at wrong? Am I missing some fundamental things like:

- this attack needs to be focus on this effect, or
- this attack needs to be paired with these support to be effective, or
- this attack cannot be used with blood magic or I'll kill myself

Things like that?

Well noone can choose your playstyle for you and your questions can't be answered as easily as you might think. What helped me a lot was Neversink's thread:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1041989
It's just very well and extensively written and covers a lot of the fundamentals. The concepts can easily be aplied to other attacks than tornado shot and puncture. Give it a look if you haven't already. Maybe there's something in there for you.