Nodor

I built Sagani into a speedy bow using interrupter.. and it's effective (on normal). I use a hunting bow on her and gave her interrupt talents/equipment. I also build a might based ranger that uses a War Bow instead of a hunting bow, and while she does more damage, she doesn't stop nearly as many spells in progress.

Fight some and check the hit calculations. +6-8 points of deflection won't help you. I have found that deflection scales well. 5 points of deflection is valuable - and as it continues to reduce the damage you take by reducing (or eliminating) the hits you take, you never stop wanting more.

Yes, but (a) many stats didn't really matter in those games - for instance, having 16 Int only really affected how many spells you could write in your book, and (b) in BG2, it bears noting, none of the companions actually have bad distributions or bad stats. Attributes are a lot more meaningful in PoE than they were in the IE games, and the distributions on NPC companions are a lot worse. The fighters in BG 2 usually had around 15 str. This meant that unless they were buffed they suffered major damage and to hit penalties relative to any player generated melee hero. I do not think it is unreasonable that Pillars does the exact same thing.