This is strictly a personal opinion:
I was a fan of the original mod concept before the vocal fans went all crazy and demanded a complete removal. To compromise, CG Dev gave us a crippled version of what we have today. It was a 100% drop rate then when it first came out and that was very nice. I was seeing diverse teams in arena and GW and GoH became interesting again. Yes, it was annoying going up against a maxxed defense tank, but if all your character's attack power base was higher, it did not matter.
I also know the original intent was have 6&7 dot mods to be raid exclusive, but really with characters being able to solo and mod increasing character stats, that would have been easily farmed in time.
When AAT raid came out shortly thereafter, it was apparent to me that the Devs built it around the original mods concept. People then complained about tank being too difficult for the average guild, and realistically having these mods would have lessen the tank's difficulty. I personally believe that the current Thrawn/CLS/whatever over powered toon wouldn't be as much of a problem today and you could have just focused on your favorite characters. But this is just my 2 cents.