I don't think I've equipped a skill mod yet. For a while I just deconstructed them but now I'm at the cap for printer filament. The real problem is that I haven't found any reason at all to do anything other than healing launcher / revive hive, and no real use for mods other than maybe +ammo on the launcher, which would really only be useful if I wanted to put on insane healing to be able to facetank a hammer bro for giggles.
Definitely good gear is better than high gear scores. Obviously good gear with high gear scores is nice, though. Apparently the GS is mostly just going to affect things like the armor values, while the talents and attribute rolls are mostly GS independent. And the way it works, some of the purples will have higher rolls on attributes because there's a "budget" for rolled skills/talents and because there are fewer rolls on a purple, it can have a higher max. I'm still not ready for actual recalibration to start maxing out GS.
My easy fix to skill mods is to lower the skill power requirement but I'm not sure how that could effect something else in the game. Also, since skill power is only a gate to activate mods I'm wondering if damage from skills scales with our level and/or gear score? it doesn't seem to but I could be wrong. I used the turret/chem launcher combo for a while but the turret seems useless on tougher enemies. I may just dump it and use the revive with something else. The skills overall are a bit disappointing and not all that fun to use. I've tried the drone but it gets shot down quickly, the shield is not really my thing. I did read a nice argument for pulse when paired with the talent that grants additional damage after its effect wears off. Ohh well, I do really like all three of the specializations. This game just need some fine tuning to get better which is most likely being worked on so I guess we have to be patient.