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Well, you can take a level of holy vindicator to get the armor and weapon proficiencies. You'd still lose a level of casting, but not to channel. Of course, you have to hit 6th level and invest in some feats and 5 ranks in knowledge: the planes to do this, but the class lets you channel into a shield to increase it's bonus by the number of your channel dice. This ability lasts until someone successfully attacks you or 24 hours whichever comes first. Maybe the antagonize feat to get the enemy to attack you could work. For PFS I would recommend Cleric 8/Holy Vindicator 4.
You'd want a good charisma, so I would recommend aasimar or human over dwarf
Level 1: Selective channel (extra channel too if human)
Level 3: Toughness
Level 5: Alignment Channel (evil)
Level 7: Antagonize
Level 9: Shield Focus
Level 11: Spell Penetration
Something like that. Get Holy Vindicator at level 6, take cleric till cleric 8, and then finish out with Holy Vindicator. YOu only lose one caster level, but get some nice things to compensate for it.
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Well to start with the premise is slightly flawed. "Tank" isn't a party role in pathfinder. There is no aggro mechanic other than what the GM thinks the enemy should be doing. In PFS the GM has to follow combat tactics as written in the encounter, but they give a lot of leeway things so your ability to avoid damage and protect the party is limited by the whims of another. Not a good place to be.
Tower shield is a trap. Don't take it. The minus to hit and other factors make for huge drawbacks for marginal improvement in AC. Its not hard to make a cleric with standard gear and magic to not get hit except on crit threats, any investment past that is a waste and I would argue a waste well before that point. +1 dex, +6 armor (4 mirror armor) and +2 shield is AC 19 at first level. Add in shield of faith and you are not going to get hit by the average CR 3 monster or NPC very often. Of course being a 3/4 BAB character with slow movement and marginal strength means you aren't going to be hurting much either. The combination of high AC and terrible offensive capability means you are a bottom tier target in both types of calculations (ease of threat removal, and how dangerous the threat is). You won't be tanking, you will be shifting the attacks to others.
Don't take channel into consideration when looking at dwarfs. You are -1 channel for being a dwarf and it looks like you burnt 2 build points on cancelling out that deficit. Don't bother. Channel is a pretty bad ability, it doesn't scale well. Its possible to make it reasonably good, but it requires a different build concept than a dwarf tank.
You don't need 18 wisdom if you are a martial cleric. In fact a 15 is all you really need in that stat, +1 at 4th level gives you the 16 you need for the bonus spell that you get at 5th level for having +3 wisdom modifier. Since a 15 on a dwarf is only 3 points, that gains you 7 points to be spent on more important stats for a battle cleric. Heck, follow my advice on charisma and I've gained you 9 build points without even trying. Put that into some dex and strength. Get a reach weapon, take combat reflects. Control a large area of the battlefield with enlarge person. Take the growth domain if you can so you can get a fast enlarge person. That is how you really "tank" in PF. Control a large portion of the battlefield making it hard for you opponents to bypass or deal with.
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Tower shield is a trap. Don't take it. The minus to hit and other factors make for huge drawbacks for marginal improvement in AC.
That's questionable advice, particularly for AC-focused melees with a "glue" mechanic keeping the monsters near them, especially phalanx-fighters.
They also let you do fun stuff like declare cover dead-ahead, and take point advancing toward the Hasted hobgoblin archers.
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As for the "tank" question, It can be nice to have a character with high hp/ac/fort present to hold off big solo creatures. I'm not saying that this is the definition of a tank, by the way.
I believe you are comparing a tank versus a damage sponge, which many people try to do.
With a cleric, you have the versatility of spellcasting to help improve you "appeal" towards enemies. Channeling can help support you ability to take in some damage, but during the time you are channeling, you have to consider the enemy's option of attacking the front person, or taking down the weaker ones in the back.
Compel Hostility might help, but you have to read the wording correctly. "Whenever a creature you can see that threatens you makes an attack against one of your allies" means that they can move out your threaten range and be fine and dandy to beat up someone else. Moreover, the Compel Hostility/Sanctuary combo, if done correctly, can only "force" one creature per round, as per the immediate action used by the Compel Hostility.
Though as stated before, there is no guarenteeed "aggression table" for people to see who is up next to be attacked. You have a living person controlling and opposing your band of pathfinders, so you do have to realize that anything goes.
But then again, if you are able to get a Confusion off, then somehow able to hit every enemy, they go straight to you. Find a way to tell your party to focus their attacks, and delay until before the target's turn and damage it. Confusion states that a confused creature will attack the last thing that attacked it.
"Channel is a pretty bad ability"
You might want to put "I think" before that. Channel doesn't provoke, and helps very well against AoO spells. It's also probably the only source of holy damage the party has without investing a lot of gold.
No no it's pretty much bad. Not a whole lot of thinking behind it. You need to off stat to make much use of it, it scales poorly compared to spells and requires feats in a feat starved class to make it usable to any real degree. I'd rather be casting spells or using domain abilities thank you.
That "it doesn't provoke" doesn't help matters much because at that point you're standing next to an enemy whose response to that might be "full attack".
It's best use is either in conjuction with Shield Other (which is a pseudo method of increasing it's healing but nonetheless effective) or as an out of combat free heal which does not cost spells nor wand charges.
As for a source of "holy" damage. That's not really very important as theirs no such thing as "holy" damage. It is "positive energy damage" by which it's effective against undead. Undead, who by the way, have a good will save.
Now you attach this ability to a stat that literally does nothign for you except increase your diplomacy score and you have a recipe for a feature you're better off ignoring unless you want to take a crack at trying to make it effective. Which, in the context of a cleric trying to act as a screen for their group just isn't reasonably feasible.
Tower shield is a trap. Don't take it. The minus to hit and other factors make for huge drawbacks for marginal improvement in AC.That's questionable advice, particularly for AC-focused melees with a "glue" mechanic keeping the monsters near them, especially phalanx-fighters.
They also let you do fun stuff like declare cover dead-ahead, and take point advancing toward the Hasted hobgoblin archers.
Bear in mind that cover dead ahead trick only helps you. It does not in fact help the group since it only provides cover for yourself and not anyone behind you.
It's a "bad" option and probably a trap option but it's not without benefits. I'd argue it's certainly not worth a feat.
Don't use Tower shields. You essentially gimp yourself and waste the Max Dex increase on your armor from Armor Training.
Plus a cleric can be a great melee combatant and eating the -2 on attack rolls from using a tower shield basically gives everyone you attack +2 AC.
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There is a way to make this build work. However it requires system mastery to under stand how it works.
My PFS Cleric(Divine Strangest)5/Monk(Sensei)2
AC brake down
Dex 1
Wis 7
Dodge 1 (Dodge feet monk bonus.)
Mage Armor 4 (Potion or wand depending on the group)
Natural Armor 2 (Bark skin as protection(Defense) domain. Using Rod of lesser extend to get 100min out of it.)
Shield 4 (Shield as protection(Defense) domain. Using Pearl of power to use it multiple times a day.)
Deflection 2 (Domain power, or casting shield of faith.)
AC 31 for most encounters
To hit bonus +11 with unarmed strike
Stunning fist 3/Day DC 20 + touch spell cast (Bestow Curse is best. Later add Poison, and Slay Living to the options. Never bother with inflict as there damage is to low to bother with.)