You can have bad or good streaks. I did 4 HM 55 FPs in a day with my guild on my scoundrel ( me being the only smuggler in group), where we got 8 elite smuggler drops. (I was fully geared after that ) On the other hand, i have done 10-15 fps on my Powertech, and never seen a single Powertech tank drop. Those are extreme examples, but with a system based on luck, you can get both extremes.

It´s a game of luck, there is no rule that there must be a drop for every class. Be happy that now mostly stuff drops for the classes that are present. All those smuggler drops in EV back in the days which no one needed

You can buy some Elite gear with Elite comms, and some with unassembled pieces, those drop in story mode 55 operations.

You can mail stuff to your alts. (at least as a subscriber, no idea if thats an f2p issue)

First, you get it on every character (both factions) You can see the bonus 1% on your character screen. Just hover over the stats and it is under Skills/Buffs. Also it depends on what companion class it was. This is only for accuracy, crit and surge. I wouldnt know where you can see the bonus to healing or hp. Hope this helps.

You can do the fight two ways. - You kill the turrets and dps the boss only after every set of turrets, and give the tank the possibility to keep aggro on both turrets and the boss, therefore making the tanks and healers job easy. - Or one dps can kill the boss quickly, getting 6 turrets on 3 different corners, making it quite impossible to tank them all, so they are mostly shooting at the healer, who can't heal himself and the group. Guess which option is better

Artificers can craft a few dye modules. http://dulfy.net/2013/05/14/swtor-dye-modules-guide/ This is a full list of the different dyes and where to get them.

By getting a race to level 50, it is unlocked to all classes. But you can also buy the unlock with cartel coins or credits.

considering this is the new player forum, where people like to help new players, your answer is just... wow. That way you are going to get a lot of help here...

If you mean the affection of your companions, you can improve that by picking choices in conversations which they like and giving them gifts ( but be sure to give the right gift to them to get the most of the affections points )

An easy an not to expensive way to get gear is buying the 66 blue mods and pieces fromt he gtn. Decently priced most of the time, and not too bad stats-wise. I outfit my comps with them to get them some good gear.

I hope I never met both of you guys at the same time in a fp, because that is going to be the longest run ever with no out of combat heals ( or self-heals) As a healer i put some hots on the tank out of combat if he needs them and if I have the energy. As a tank, i use my self-heal even though i normally get healed by the healer. by the way, there are not that many places in the current game where the tank needs a lot of heals at the end of the fight, and the healer is completely out of energy.

As far as I know they still drop in EC hard mode.

If you are dps-tanking, you keep aggro partly because of your high damage. But on 55s, you can't out-dps decent dps, you need to get your aggro the "traditionel way". If you are not tankspecced, there is no chance to keep the aggro. For the 55 HMs and operations, you need the extra mitigation from your tank tree as well as the abilities to stay alive and keep aggro. And thats what i meant by the proper tank mechanics, you have to relearn tanking with your new abilities and rotations.

I just think that you don't learn the proper tank mechanics, if you only dps-tanked so far.