You're kind of special, it's cute.
http://imgur.com/a/5NL4JActually, my growth is close to external sources as my gear break down is +8/+12 or +7/+12 and I am spreading out gear between two casters (the other one has 34~ int). Which means my base values are 21/16 by level 8 or level 7 it would be 19/16 or if I was level 6 then it would be 17/16 -- oh joy, there's an inflection point in there, can you see it?
By level 8 none of the gear on the island was useful to me from the vendors, so I spent 11 points in int and 6 in memory. The errant int probably comes from one of the flesh pieces I consumed or an event.
Also, I didn't take 'Bigger Badder', if I did then the parity between internal and external would be closer. So at level 8 I would say it's pretty close in terms of external sources (barring the usage of bloodrose pots). However, it's kind of expected that most of your power will come from gear at the end of the day for better or for worse.
As for armor exploits, I am pretty sure that gearing for a fight intelligently (current meta you observe - something you don't do - or by encounter) isn't exploiting; having 300 base in either phys or mag armor is pretty normal especially if you make more than one trip to the vendor.
Could I have diverted points into Constitution and have forgone some memory? Probably. Do I need to? No.
You do realize that you're trying to take my builds as elastic strategy and that is a complete mistake, right? You probably didn't.
