Crimsanotic

Earth Sibyls of the Talons of Vengeance have several earth blast powers, including a nuke.

Quite a few damage buffs are AoE and FF and Cold Dom's buffs are AoE and permanent so neither of those sets are picking or choosing who to buff. Fortitude is one of the only single target defense buffs I can think of. Increasing their damage cap -is- an offensive buff though, since that means a tank can spam yet more reds than they could before, or benefit from Fulcrum better, or literally any other damage buff. And in addition to treading on brute territory, buffing tanks offensively gives them overlap with even scrappers.

Their damage cap was also increased by a fairly significant amount.

I 100% agree. Buffing tanks offensively is not the move.

Brutes with IOs and such can reach 90% S/L resistance, as well as defense softcap to everything (sans psi) with only one person near them with invincibility. Additionally, with dull pain, brutes can hit their HP hardcap which is about 300 hit points lower than the tank health hardcap. Brutes also get AoE taunts in their primaries, like tanks get in their secondaries. The brute taunts also reduce the range of enemies by 75% and it is the same magnitude taunt. Brutes also have the same generic threat generation level of tanks. The only thing tanks have that assists them in holding and maintaining aggro better is that, yes, their attacks AoE taunt instead of taunting only the enemy hit. Your statement that brutes are not tanks is false. What do you think villains did prior to Going Rogue? They were just able to do all of their content without a tank? No. They had brutes. On topic: I like OPs proposed change. It allows tanks to tank better by allowing them to hold larger groups of enemies. So there is really a trade-off between the two ATs. Since both tanks and brutes can effectively tank the same but brutes currently do more damage, there is little reason to play a tank. This is especially true when min/maxed and the differences between their durability becomes entirely negligible. OP's suggestion carves a further niche for tanks that they should hold.