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My group of players are a gnome alchemist, a human gunslinger, a goblin rogue, and a (mostly-)human warpriest.
Between the alchemist and the gunslinger, any foe with a low Touch AC is generally toast within a round or two.
The rogue always acts in the surprise round, and carries the Vindictive Harpoon. (We're playing the harpoon under the old 3.5 Edition Stormwrack rules, in which it can inflict partial damage on its way back out of the target immediately prior to the wielder's next turn, if the target fails a Reflex save. In our game, the Boarding Pike of Repelling is long forgotten, and the harpoon is still going strong.)
The warpriest is, well, a warpriest, which turns out to be one of the combat monsters of the ACG.
All of the players are highly experienced, so they punch well above their weight when it comes to CR.
Does anyone have any suggestions for beefing up Inkskin Locke's spell list? I plan to give her the new Bullet Ward spell and Fickle Winds. What else might give her a fighting chance?
Give her some one-shot items she can use to prep for battle to beef her up.
I'm thinking a potion of cat's grace and a potion of shield of faith (the latter at CL 12th for a +4 deflection) would bump her to AC 25, touch 18, flat-foot 21.
(+4 armor (from mage armor), +4 deflection, +4 Dex (including +2 from potion of cat's grace), +3 natural)
If you really need to make her last longer, give her one mythic tier and the Dual Initiative mythic monster ability. If you don't want to go that far, just have her drink a potion of haste and let her have a lesser metamagic rod of quicken spell that uses charges and cannot be recharged. (Give it, say 5 charges remaining.)
She already has protection from arrows. This gives her DR 10/magic vs. ranged attacks. This won't help her against the harpoon or if the gunslinger has a +1 pistol.
You could switch out summon monster IV for improved invisibility. Unless the PCs have anti-invisibility magic (e.g. glitterdust, she'll be very hard to target.
Her other spells are pretty good. When I played the encounter, she attacked the party at the top of the tower on Tidewater Rock. She flew up invisibly, and used blindnes on our sorcerer (me), effectively taking my character out of the combat. She also used geyser to knock two PCs off the roof for a bunch of falling damage. And then she successfully charmed our fighter, making her break off the attack. (My sorceress was able to dispel that effect, putting the captian back in the fight.)
Another dirty trick you could try would be to give her minor image. (maybe switch that out for false life, and have her drink a potion for that effect.) While flying and invisible, Inkskin could use the illusion to make an image of herself blasting the party with spells. That would make the party waste a few shots... and hopefully their best spells... against an illusion. Come to think of it, the combination of the illusion plus improved invisibility would be downright evil! She could really cast spells at the party, while making it look like the illusion is casting them!
And, there's nothing preventing you from just by fiat giving her more hit points.
So... there's a lot you could do with the encounter to beef it up for optimized characters run by experienced players.