So, other than a couple of black hole pieces (which may or may not have desirable stats), it looks like the SM version of TFB is a complete waste of time for people decked in campaign/BH, even Rakata -- except, of course, to learn the basic strategies to take into HM.
My guild has been farming Denova HM for quite some time. We cherry-picked a group of 8 decked out min/maxers for our SM TFB run on Wednesday. We got through everything except for the final boss, but that was because one of our healers had to drop out for the night. Although this operation's difficulty is supposed to be tuned for groups in Columi level gear, I would be interested to see if your average Columi-geared (no BH mods or Rakata) group can actually clear it without a ton of wipes. Even when all mechanics are executed correctly, I've noticed that there is sometimes quite a bit of raid-wide damage going on, and your healers would have to be godly to pull the numbers required to keep the ops group up while wearing just a Columi set. Not to mention your tanks are taking more damage because of their crappy gear too. I don't think we came close to hitting any enrage timers, so I'm not sure how generous enrage is for Columi DPS.
And all for a reward of... some Rakata pieces? A couple of BH pieces which MIGHT have good stats? Not even a few measly Black Hole Comms? Why is this operation dropping gear that has been available since the beginning of the game? Where is the gear progression one would expect going from HM Denova to SM TFB? People in Columi gear are better off running HM EV/KP, the FIRST operations to hit the game, to get the Rakata gear they need with a lot fewer wipes and hassle. Then once they're decked in Rakata from those, the only reason they'd need to run SM TFB is to form baseline strats and become familiar with the operation -- Oh, and to "see the sights." So only one SM run is necessary, maybe 2 for kicks, right? The loot for SM needs to be upped dramatically considering the difficulty level, which seems to be out-of-reach for the casual players it is designed for.
Don't get me wrong though. I really love this new operation. It actually has some very fun and interesting mechanics that involve more than just tank-swapping, and very little to no melee hate (that we've seen) which is a welcome change! The trash mobs drop an appropriate amount of credits. The planet design is really cool. Lots of sights to see here, but I don't think most casual players will get to see them. The loot in SM is a severe disappointment; please considering fixing it by adding a healthy amount of Black Hole Comms to make it worth doing.
Just my 2 credits or what-have-you.