Toughness was taken on every build as a prereq for toughness enhancements (40 hp for 4 ap) until the new enhancement system (trees) rolled out with the Shadowfell expansion.

Sorry I'm a bit late to the party.

After dicking around for two of my aasimar scourge PLs, I decided to go full memelord and try something different on my third.

I popped an old +1 heart I had and went pure 20 artificer on a whim about a three weeks ago.

With Renegade you can definitely make a solid melee artificer without being pure dogshit. The issue is however; you have to take T5 in Renegade which in turn means you lose out a considerable bit of the offensive boost in Battle although it's mostly the threat range boost that's the biggest loss.

That being said; I was able to keep about 70% defense on the inventory panel via AC before blur, dodge, incorp, etc. Downside was obviously I gave up evasion for the HP boosts. That being said. Let's talk about why this bullshit works.

Embed Construct gives you +20% racial HP bonus. Now, this bad boy stacks with Epic Defense for +45% total. If you aren't looking to min-max Morningstars as your end goal weapon; I'd say swap out Scourge for normal Protector aasimar. That'd net you a total of +55% HP since all three bonus types would in fact stack. Also the cores for Renegade give you +90HP assuming you take it constructive conduit which you should.

Now here's the kicker. Kinetic Charge gives you +1 shield bonus AC per 3 arty levels and stacks up to 5 times. Each stack lasts 15 seconds, and you usually gain one every 1-2 swings. This means you get 30AC shield bonus for 18 of your arty levels. This is massive; but what's even better is you can twist in shield prowess for 50% boost to that. So you've got 45 AC right there. You're going be wearing medium or heavy armor, with decent max dex bonuses due to the way the tree is set up and enhancement bonuses to armor from renegade.

Edit: Forgot the PRR/MRR. You're only going to get a bonus of +16 PRR and +15 MRR. Not the greatest for sure, so I definitely recommend you rock the heavy armor.

Now here's some more special wisdom for you. The admixture spells from Renegade aren't effected by Epic Defense. AKA: they aren't limited to touch range, you can chuck them from half a mile away. This is actually beneficial in the fact you can heal allies reliably even while in the "Fuck you I don't want to die" stance.

Treat yourself to a good amount of heal amp and repair amp. The aura ticks from Regeneration Construct might seem like they are weak on paper. But with a good amount of repair SP and some amp, this is a pretty solid way to keep yourself healed/topped off all the way into R5+ content. The reconstruct SLA might as well be considered cheating, as it sure is shit isn't remotely as reduced self healing wise compared to Heal as a spell. I was reliably slapping myself for +700 in R5s. And if your heal amp is good (IE: Past lives and a bit of gearing) you won't feel the penalty from construct essence at all. Folks will still be able to heal you just fine and dandy. Oh and make sure to keep Convert on another melee. It's a good way to keep them topped up during hairy fights with your aura or slap them with a recon.

Did I mention healing hands is also great on a self-construct? Because as stated; if you keep your amp up on both ends. Guess what; you're going to find out that you get more self healing than a normal positive only aasimar. Dump wisdom if you need to, but make sure you slot some wisdom gear if you aren't a full retard.

Weapon choices are ultimately up to you. But SWF + PSFW with Whelm is outright demonically good fun. Let alone the upgraded version of Whelm looks to be even better.

Other than pure barbarian; this was honestly the most fun I've had outright destroying everything that moved as a melee in a long time. Not sure if that says something about me or DDO at this point. Plus Mighty Slam/Battlefist just have some straight up satisfying animations when you land them.