How well do the fighter archetypes fare against the base class? I know TSS is considered weak. I think I read recently that Two Handed is not that great either but I got no idea about Aldori Defender.
They all have their strengths. One thing I've overlooked on THF is the snowballing bonus to Sunder Armor. That could really come in handy on higher difficulties where the hardest foes have a ton of armor tacked on and you can get your CMB almost arbitrarily high with the right party comp.
TSS9 is nice to give your shield bonus to touch AC which becomes a factor late (when the great Towers show up), but sword and shield is mostly undersupported.
I had a lot of fun with an AD8/Thug/Bard using Disarming Strike. Disarmed toons keep trying to attack untrained in Unarmed combat, triggering AoOs for all around. The big payoff there is Steel Net at AD8. Along with Crane Wing and some way to get a decent Mirror Image you'll have a lot of staying power in melee, if not a ton of straight damage. Aldori Dueling Mastery is a nice quality of life early feat.
CMs are implemented as standard actions, so you could also combine with Freebooter 10 which has Freebooter's Bane Move action to make a resilient tank/debuffer in the middle of combat.