You unlucky! I have been running HM's for a while and all I see is BH/Trooper and IA drops. our one friend just reached level 50 about two weeks ago, and already he has 3 pieces of Columi gear for his main spec, and 3 pieces of Columi gear for his off spec. I only have one piece, and have been running it since end of December 2011 Sorry to hear that you not getting any luck, but there are people in the same boat I think. I do agree with you that it should drop a token for the classes that are in your group. But that would be a huge amount of work to code in the game. Anyways hope you get better luck.

Mumble is a nice voice program. we also use a free public one here in South Africa, host by I.S you can also request a private channel, and then you can have a certificate that allows you and your friends to have there own one. Comes in handy.

Well, what I suggest is don't go all out in one stat, if you are finding that the dps is pulling to much aggro from you, then there are many different reasons why that is happening. If it is an aoe pull, if it is a boss etc. Basically, lets assume it is a single target and its a hard mode boss. your main roll as a tank is to be in control of the fight, and maintain aggro as best you can. and BTW bosses do dump aggro, so there will be times when you will have to taunt to get him/her/it back. Since you are a range tank, you start the pull, but the dps hits him first, there is the first mistake, you should do the first couple of hits, so that your threat is on top of there's and then the dps starts. Okay now you are tanking the boss, and your damage is spiky(this depends on the fight, sometimes there will be a big hit though), which healers really hate BTW, so that means you are lacking in the defensive abilities. you now need to start to balance out between absorb,shield and defensive, defensive > shield > absorb. for me I get accuracy to 100% and then work on the other stats like defensive etc.. Don't over emphasize on threat, since what good is having miles of threat but then you become squishy, so I would get your accuracy to a decent amount say 100% if you can, then start with the other stats. If one of the other BH can offer there in site here, it would be more of a help, since like I said I play a different class to you, and have not tried a BH yet, only class I have not tried , strange!

Run some hard modes, I know there is a tanking relic that drops there. I think BT has one.

There is a sticky in the Juggernaut thread about tanking, give it a read. But to answer your question and I am sure I will get corrected on this. Balance is the key, you cant go all out threat gain, by staking Accuracy, Strength and Power etc. You need to balance between your defensive abilities like Absorption, Shield Chance and Defensive. I don't know what class you are playing, so I am comparing it to my Juggernaut. So in other words, your shield rating and absorption should be roughly similar e.g. 30% shield - 30% absorb, there is also many other factors though. But like I said there are many other threads and web pages that are dedicated to this subject (sithwarrior.com) comes to mind, where they try to theory craft the stuff and have spread sheets etc. Give it a read and see where it takes you. Good luck, and practice and understanding your class makes perfect.

Finally! A post that I will actually reply to. Your post was very informative, and I hope that allot of people read it and understand what you are trying to say, but sadly allot of people won't. When it comes to releases of massive games like SWTOR, people have there own expectations, and they want the game to be how they see it, not what is practical and doable. If people actually had to see what the Bioware Dev Team is doing in there offices, and seeing the programmers going through the massive wall of coding text, trying to find one little problem, they will realize that it is not as simple as it looks. It is sad to see people rage on the forums, and make posts like "I quit give me a reason to stay" posts and how this game fails. This game is massive, and it will always be in development mode, MMO'S are never a finished product, and we will continually see bugs, exploits and new features coming up. Bioware is doing the best they can do, within the budgets and timeline they have, and a little bit of patience will go along way. Back to work now thanks OP for putting in the time and effort to make a good post To the Bioware team, keep up the good work, and I am sure there are many people who are appreciative of what you are doing and what you have accomplished.

would like some clarity on this too?

I agree, just practice. have fun