I feel you’re better off taking your first level in Fighter, or an alternative, than Artificer. It’s a difference between a lot more HP and much more skills, but I don’t think you’re gonna use a great deal of skills beyond Craft and Use Magic Unit. But I’d almost certai

War Magic – A subclass more on defense and focuses on durability. It’s like a reliable mixture of the evocation and abjuration subclasses but for a generalist instead of a specialist.  It is actually rather cool how they might do equally melee and range of thirty”feet