The filecards do play a pretty big role for me, especially with all the characters who got little to no comics exposure and therefore don't have another source to draw from in exploring their personalities. The Lifeline: pacifist thing is a good point, though -- v1 having that pistol totally went against his character unless he only uses it for warning shots or something... Remember, though, when looking at filecard descriptions of his character that the RAHC and Anti-Venom versions are actually a different guy...!
With the ranking I tend to ignore the filecards now since so many characters' grades have jumped all over the place, particularly the huge jumps in '97. I go by the setup the comics pretty much use too, which is the notion that the GI Joe team as a unit has its own command structure which doesn't have to strictly follow grades from the other branches of the military. I ultimately refer to the organisational chart from DDP's Battle Files, which suits my history of growing up with Action Force since Flint outranks Duke!
