Curses! Now I really want to load up Herostats and compare my fire/fire brute with my fire/fire tank just to reassure myself of what I already believe to be true!
Maybe a little Thunderstruck will ease the pain..
If I recall correctly
Tanks had the highest HP, had higher modifiers on the armor powers, and the highest caps
Brutes had second highest HP, had scrapper modifiers on the powers, but had Scrapper modifiers on the defensive powers, but the same caps as tanks.
Scrappers had the lowest HP of the three, had the same modifier on the armor powers..BUT had lower caps than tanks/brutes.
and generally in a well built team, you would hit the cap on either Resistance or defenses*, so the fact that tanks had higher modifiers did not matter.
and that was before Incarnate, IOs ect.
*Unless you had support that gave you the opposite of what your armor set gave you, of course..if that is the case then tank/brute is generally irrelevant..because you are going to be very survivable against most anything that will show up