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Most of my playtesting has been focusing on the melee side of the magus, but I spent sometime today playing around with the shooting star synthesis and I have some questions/concerns that popped up, especially because the shooting star synthesis will always have the eldritch archer looming over its shoulder, making players ask "how is this different?"
Weapon selection:
There are not a lot of great spell options for giving you range of over 30ft, meaning that a lot of ranged weapons are in a tricky spot. Longbows and composite longbows can work for a very specific kind of shooting star magus that is going all in on the longest range spells, but will quickly end up in a position where they are eating an accuracy penalty that completely defeats the design of striking spell. You never want to use striking spell on an attack that is taking the volley penalty.
Shortbows are pretty enticing, because they have that deadly D10 trait sitting there begging to be used for crit fishing oportunities, but when you are probably not making more than 1 shot a turn, it feels like you are kind of wasting your time with a D6 base weapon with a reload time of 0. Usually people crit fish with a bow by being a flurry ranger and reducing their MAP as much as possible while making as many shots as possible, but that is never really going to work for a magus unless they can get the option to attach spells to all of their shots in a round, and that will be stuck as a very high level feat. Not something that a typical player will use often over the course of a characters career.
Instead, the magus, more so than any class except maybe the crossbow precision ranger, could be built around not using a reload 0 weapon and folding reloading into some other action with a feat in a really cool way, that is not likely to be that game breaking. The halfling Magus with a slingstaff should be really cool, but is tough to build right now without a lot of archetype shenanigans. I don't think it makes sense to push the magus into needing to use a bow over a crossbow or different kinds of slings, but the bow is the only weapon that gets a feat for it currently. In fact, the magus with a bow feels the most like the build that never actually wants to use striking spell, and instead just cast an early damage spell to activate energizing strikes and then just fire your bow as often as possible. The problem with that build is that the fighter and the ranger both do it much better than a magus is ever going to be able to pull off, with it probably working better to MC into Magus to grab Energizing strikes than MCing into fighter or ranger for relevant combat feats.
Thrown weapons are a hot mess of not working with focus spells and abilities that involve the weapon leaving your hand. I think that can all get sorted out, but it makes it a challenge to really play test it. Like a returning hand axe doing a spell swipe should work but doesn't.
Comet spell sounds really cool, but is incredibly difficult to use because you have to use spells from spell slots (and you don't get many) and you are always limited by the spell range instead of the weapon range. A lot has already been said about how punishing cascading ray feels to use in play, especially when you get a -5 MAP penalty tagged on.
All of this leads me to ask why you want to build a ranged magus instead of an eldritch archer? The obivious answer is to do your thing at level 1, but even as a ranged magus, it sort of just feels like you are best off building to become an Eldritch archer as quickly as you are able, so you can be a better powerhouse single shot sniper.
Good insights, but just to add on bow topic, Daikyu/Greatbow sounds like it might fit the gap you identiy: bigger d8 die and solid 80 ft increment, while lacking Volley penalty. It lacks the Deadly die but at least when you are Spellstriking you are practically guaranteed to do great damage if you Crit on the weapon. Advanced Uncommon Daikyu and Uncommon Martial Slingstaff which you also mentioned perhaps raise question if Shooting Stars should get superior profiency/access to ranged weapons?
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The thing I hate most about shooting star is that it gives you permission, not a benefit. It should just be part of the base striking spell.
The other syntheses give you a stride, or temp hp. Shooting star... allows you to use shooting star.
Striking spell is terrible enough that people are falling back on those mediocre synthesis benefits as a reason to use it. Star doesn't even get thrown that bone.
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The thing I hate most about shooting star is that it gives you permission, not a benefit. It should just be part of the base striking spell.
The other syntheses give you a stride, or temp hp. Shooting star... allows you to use shooting star.Striking spell is terrible enough that people are falling back on those mediocre synthesis benefits as a reason to use it. Star doesn't even get thrown that bone.
Yeah, you get the ability to be worse that just casting a spell and firing a bow. Cool? That's why Shooting Star is a hard pass so far when Eldritch Archer is a thing: why not take a synthesis that actually does something and Eldritch Archer instead of Shooting Star?