Back to SoM with the Barrage sphere. Quite the incredible little sphere, gotta say. It's just pretty good, from my not so in-depth looks at it. So let's see what a deep dive will bring up.

Post-Review Analysis: Wow. That was a very short and sweet little sphere. But there's very little talent bloat, and most of the talents are pretty nice. The rest are more niche and cool-sounding than filler junk. Definitely a less-is-more situation.
Full or Partial BAB: Until level 5, all the talents and the sphere function equivalently for all BAB. Except the chance to hit.

Flex Talents: Switching in Hammering Shots can allow you to reduce initiatives to deny their final turn. Arrow Split is nice to have on demand when you face DR. Suppressing Fire is decent for locking down a dangerous foe, though you could find better ways. Intercepting Shot / Vigilant Sharpshooter is a neat combo when you come across archers. Blowback Barrage is useful when going into a typical dungeon.

Ranking system:
(S) Superb: You always want this. It's awesome.
(G) Good: You would certainly not complain about having this, especially in the right builds / situations.
(B) Bad: While perhaps better than nothing, you are giving up something for it, so probably shouldn't without a good reason.
(N) No.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.

- Special Ratings:
(C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
(I) Impossible: Can't be rated because it is just not defined enough to give a meaningful rating - it depends too much on DM ruling, or personal use. I'll just place it where I guess the average result would put it.
(F) Flavor: This indicates that the main draw to the talent is going to be its inherent fluff or flavor, rather than raw power or utility.
Base Sphere

Melee Archer: Point Blank Shot. But it's just added on top of the base sphere, and taking the sphere counts as PBS for the purposes of prerequisites. So...yeah. Even if you wanted non-sphere feats, you now have less feat tax to deal with.

Barrage: Get 2 attacks in a standard action, at the penalty of -2 to both. 90% + 90% is 180%, making it generally a better use of your attack action.
Make that 3, if you expend martial focus (though at a -4 penalty instead). 80%+80%+80% is 240%, which isn't a huge jump from 180% (but still is one), and is particularly poor against higher AC targets. Every 5 BAB, you can gain +1 attack when expending martial focus.
I'd recommend having an excel sheet open that calculates the average expected worth of expending the focus vs regular barrage for any given AC.

Blitz talents: These talents can be activated on using barrage. These basically act on each extra shot. So if you expend focus for 3 attacks, you can apply a blitz to two of the attacks. The two blitz need not be the same talent.
Spoiler: Blitz Talents
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Arrow Split (<S>): You total up the base attack, and the extra attacks you apply this to, before applying DR/hardness. You fire a lot. DR/hardness scales with number of attacks. This is great if you face DR, which is reasonably common.

Suppressing Fire (G-S): A -3 to hit is pretty substantial. Giving up another attack for -4...not so much. But it's a solid option if your target is one you absolutely do not want to land a hit. And if they choose to not take the penalty, you get double the bonus attacks that you apply this to. Note: You can use each extra attack (before doubling) against additional foes, to provide AoE suppression rather than dump it all on a minor increase in penalties on one guy.

Hammering Shots (G): Reduces the target's place in initiative for several rounds. Pretty nice. Some would rank this as S+. I don't rate initiative as highly as that unless you're about to finish someone off, or you're playing rocket tag. But this can still potentially deny the enemy 1 last turn. Potentially
Pinning Punishment (G): Reflex save or reduce the target's speed to 0 until they spend a standard action to remove it, or if they pass a check when trying to move as a move action. Pretty good for making sure you're not getting waddled towards by a melee brute. Doesn't work against fliers.

Double Tap (N-B): This bonus is really, really low, with an unrealistic gimmick. I don't like it.
Redirection (N-B): Give up an attack to remove cover, or shoot around a corner / other similar feat. This is very incredibly niche, and would take incredible work to make truly useful. If you're firing such that you don't have line of sight on someone (around a corner), then you would still suffer 50% miss chance on the redirected attack, if you aren't scrying / already set up with mirrors. If it's just to remove the +4 bonus to cover...well, barrage gives -2 to hit, and you are reducing the chance that this attack gets to hit to 0. So... yeah. But it's at least got potential to be worked around, and has niche usage.

Distracting Shot (N): You give up an attack to make a feint. That's got very low utility, and you only break even on the bonus (on a single attack) if they've got an excessive dexterity mod. Plus you lose an attack. That needs to be stressed. Presumably feint feats could apply to make this less bad. But it's pretty bad.


Spoiler: General Talents
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Augmented Grip (S): Reduce the penalties to hit from barrage. Cool for base Barrage. Most notably, it can make the expending of martial focus applicable to many more foes.
Blitz Focus (S): Immediate action to regain focus, if 2 barrage shots hit. That's semi-reliable, even on the very barrage you expended focus for, especially past BAB 5.
Mobile Focus (S): When you move more than 5ft, but less than half speed, as a movement action, you refresh your focus. If your swift actions are already being used, and you don't already have a use for your move action, this is very reasonable.

Spinning Shot (G-S): An extra attack per barrage, so long as all of your shots can hit different targets. Awesome. Has direct synergy with Suppressing Fire. But is also simply another attack.

Blowback Barrage (<G>): If you find yourself to often be in tight confines, then you can occasionally just add [prone] to your attacks for free. On a reflex save, of course. But it doesn't cost you anything but this talent. Otherwise, the best case scenario would be to avoid them being able to 5ft step up on you as you 5ft step backwards to attack. Not so great if they are also using SoM.
Walking Fire (G): Very solid for limiting the penalties of barrage. You don't need to hit, but you must decide the order, and they only get bonus if a different attack of the same barage targeted the same one previously.

Intercepting Shot (B-G): This is actually really kinda cool. If you have Vigilant Sharpshooter. Else, using a readied action (ie 2 attacks, minimum) to attempt to ruin someone else's single attack is not a good trade. But getting to Deflect Arrows as AoO, and protect allies within range from them is very neat.
Unbalancing Combination (<B-G>): Battered is pretty lousy. But it isn't nothing, if you've got someone dead set on targeting CMD.

Close Combat Specialist (B): Nothing incredible. It has niche usage when you are facing something with serious reach, like a dragon...but you've probably got a ranged weapon for a reason. Don't let it get that close. Intentionally moving in to flank with a ranged weapon doesn't make...much sense. So it might be an occasional neat bonus you grant someone. But +2 to hit while flanking is pretty nice. Probably not worth getting into that range, but still.

Battlefield Scavenger (<B>): Effectively, it's a roughly 50% discount on your arrows. But the cost is generally trivial to the point of no one tracking it. Doesn't apply to bullets. RAI, this also doesn't apply to ammunition that doesn't normally have a 50% survival chance. If you steal ammunition / thrown weapons from someone who was hit by them before, you can use them in an extra Attack Action. Neat. But you could have just...attacked them, and not had a chance of failing a Steal check. The best case scenario would be if you're playing an excessively low economy game. Though you'd be better off using spheres of power or other magic in that case.

Vigilant Sharpshooter (I): Virtually meaningless as a single talent. At 2 talents, you get to poke someone with an arrow before they drive an axe through your brain. I don't think arrows are trip weapons. And there are better ways to do that, like having a length of rope attached to your harness, and taking an Equipment sphere talent.

Shove And Shoot (N): You are better off just taking a 5 ft step away. No chance of failure, nor targeting CMD. Like...literally no point unless you've optimized bull rush to hell and back so that even Reach weapons don't mean anything...in which case...why are you in this sphere?