To be fair, I’ve been guilty of that “trick” myself in another Pathfinder campaign (the very first one). I had rolled a goblin monk/druid who had insane AC. I think I ended up in the mid 50s in the final adventure, but even starting out between the 18+ scores in Dex and Wis, the wild shape, the self-buffs, the mage buffs on top I must have rocked 30+ around lvl 8.
Beyond that my character wasn’t that busted (I deliberately avoided the more munchkin-y Wild Shapes in favour of a rhino with a stupid strong horn attack that I would Vital Strike with, but missed most of the time because I struggled with the ToHit), and I didn’t have that many HPs either but he really was a tank’s tank and I used him as such, frequently wading into mooks and letting myself get surrounded while the Fighter and Sorcerer went to town with the damage or even dropped acid balls right on my head (who cares ? I got improved evasion, a busted Reflex score and acid resist on top of that).
Turns out when the named bad guys get inside this happy circle of friends pounding on the giant-ass dire tiger/rhino/hippo/earth elemental, they actually *hurt. *So I grapple 'em to make 'em stop hitting so much and so many goddamn times ; but doing that reduces my AC just enough that the mooks start hitting on more than just nat 20s and… well, I got myself pâté’d a few times before the Sorc learned how to make force bubbles 