You have it completely backwards. The shortage is of tanks and healers, not DPS. DPSers make up less of a TOR group than a WoW group (and Rift?). TOR's queue times should be worse because TOR requires more tanks and healers per DPS.

The only problem with this would be that I don't want to needlessly load Alderaan or Hoth every single time my group wipes. (As it is, I'm still not keen on even loading the Fleet/Ilum on every wipe, but at least those load times are somewhat bearable, even if it is frustrating to load those areas only to immediately jump back through the instance portal.)

I've mentioned this as well and I would love to see what the actual ratios are on the live servers for DPS, tanks, and healers. Given that it clearly isn't 2:1:1, this is the biggest "problem" with the LFG tool. Bioware has to find some way to increase the number of tanks and healers.

I was wondering the same thing. Good info to have.

Precisely. The only other thing it could help with is queuing at weird times (e.g., noon on a Pacific server will be harder to find a group than peak hours, though closer to peak hours for servers that are Eastern). The real problem is the "Holy Trinity," not the lack of cross-server LFG. (Well, the Holy Trinity problem is compounded by TOR's 4-man groups compared to, say, 5-mans in WoW. In TOR, DPS make up 50% of the group while in WoW it's 60%, which is a little better. Really, though, I'm not sure what the ideal ratio would be, as I have no idea how the player population is split on DPS/tanking/healing. I'm just sure it's not 50/25/25, nor even 60/20/20.)

My experiences with the Group Finder so far have come in three forms: a.) trying to do daily group quests on my level 50 Imperial Agent; b.) trying to do Flashpoints on my Imperial Agent; c.) doing Flashpoints on my level 41 Jedi Sentinel with my wife’s level 41 Jedi Shadow (spec’d DPS at the moment). In all cases, I’m DPS. First and foremost, it’s an amazing improvement over the grueling, tedious, often ineffective experience of looking for a group in General chat. Especially as a DPSer, we’re a dime a dozen, so finding groups is exceptionally difficult sometimes. That said, there are some issues (beyond the bugs). I notice that no one seems to be using it for “Planetary Destinations.” In part, this could be because you can’t edit what you’re queued for without dropping out of the queue for others (e.g., if I want to do Black Hole dailies and queue for a Flashpoint, but along the way decide I’d like to add Planetary Destinations to the list of what I’m interested in, I have to reset my position in the Flashpoint queue in order to queue for Planetary Destinations as well). I would imagine this isn’t the main reason people aren’t queuing for Planetary Destinations, but I would imagine it’s a factor. If I had to guess, people could be avoiding queuing for Planetary Destinations because they’re afraid they’ll lose out on doing a Flashpoint, which they consider much more important. Or it could just be sheer ignorance—perhaps people don’t think to use it for that, only for Flashpoints. Another issue is the time it takes to find a group as DPS. It took my wife and me over an hour to find a group for a Flashpoint tonight, and it often takes my Imperial Agent 30 to 45 minutes. I suppose this really isn’t an issue with the Group Finder so much as the mechanics of TOR and the makeup of the player population—with 4-man content requiring 50% of the group to be non-DPS (far and away the most popular choice to play as, especially without dual spec), it really brings the problem of the so-called Holy Trinity to the fore. (Namely that tanking and healing aren’t roles that are anywhere near as desirable as DPS—certainly not enough to make the player population be split 50/25/25 DPS/tank/healing.) One solution, which I have absolutely no expectation to ever see implemented, would be to allow companions to be able to fulfill the rather unpopular tanking and healing roles. Much more realistically, a dual-spec option would allow people to play a role that they don’t enjoy as much (i.e., tanking or healing) in order to do group content more often. Or Bioware could incentivize playing the less popular tank/healing roles (though, really, this is trying to convince people to do things they don’t really want to do). Without fundamental changes to the mechanics of the game, dual spec seems to be the only real solution to the queue problem, and it’s an imperfect one because some people just don’t want to tank or heal. (I for one am certainly am not interested in healing without access to mods, though that’s a separate issue.) I’ve also noticed that, since the game doesn’t check to see if a player is actually spec’d for the role they’ve chosen, some people seem to queue as DPS and end up being tanks or healers instead (which is obviously a disaster). Sometimes this is an accident, of course, but I know people sometimes game the system, hoping they can jump ahead of the DPS line, so to speak, and have their group carry them. It’d be nice if the game had some way of making sure you could only queue for things you can actually do, both in terms of spec and gear. Lastly, one other thing that would be handy (though certainly not critical) would be to have some sort of estimation of the timeframe before a group is formed for your chosen role. I often play while my daughter is taking a nap, and sometimes there just isn’t enough time to queue and actually do anything before she wakes up—some indication that I can expect an hour wait before finding a group would be nice. It allows players to plan around when they’re actually going to get to play a bit more (assuming you don’t want to do anything else but group content). Again, though, all that aside, it’s a great feature and I’m definitely glad to have it! I’m just also eagerly awaiting whatever future refinements Bioware makes to the system. TL;DR: Group finder good but has some issues.

Without dual-spec, this is a completely non-viable option. You cannot spec as a healer and do good DPS, nor vice-versa (and the same can be said of tanking and DPS). Not specing for your role is essentially asking your group to carry you. This might be okay in Normal FPs, but would be a terrible idea in Hard Modes or higher.

Possible answer, as a similar thing happened to my wife and me last night. I'm a Sentinel and my wife is a Shadow. We're both spec'd DPS. I put us into a queue (as a group) and we immediately got in... with her as a tank. Since that wasn't what we wanted, we declined and tried again. Same thing. Then I checked to see if there was an option for us to select roles. Nada. Had her check the group finder on her computer to see if she had "Tank" selected, and she didn't. If i queued us, she couldn't choose what roles she wanted. Our solution was to have her queue us. It took us 40 minutes to find a group, but once we did, we were both DPS. Now, I'm not sure what would've happened if I'd been an AC capable of being a tank or healer as well when we queued. If the "queuer," so to speak, is the only one who can choose their role and all the "queuees" are automatically assigned as both roles, it would definitely be a problem.

Well, let's be honest: Kaliyo probably only makes sense as a Bounty Hunter companion. (Since she basically is one, right down to her armor class.)

Well, that's not entirely fair. She likes/loves you as much as she's capable of liking or loving anyone.

On Hoth, yeah. Though personally she kind of annoys me.

Concealment Operatives are 100% stuck with either Kaliyo or SCORPIO. You can't stab something in the back if it's looking at you. Thus, I've never, ever used Vector, Temple, or Lokin (outside of when the game made me). My Vector's still got all his starting gear. So I'm glad Kaliyo got better, because it's not like I had any other options.

The survivability of the two of them seems pretty much the same to me. The difference is that Kaliyo seems to hold aggro much better for me (Concealment Operative) than SCORPIO did. I would imagine this is due to the fact that Kaliyo is a ranged tank and thus doesn't need to run over to a target like SCORPIO does. I just wish it was easier to get tanking Mods for her. As it is, I've been taking the blaster for her from "Lights Out" (the Heroic 2+ daily on Belsavis) and taking the mod out and dropping it into her armor. Seems a rather wasteful and silly way to get them, but since Cybertechs can't make tanking mods, I see no other way. Also, just to chime in again on this topic... it seems like after a slump in survivability in the mid- to late-30s, Kaliyo's survivability seems to pick up again around the mid-40s. Maybe it was just my gear, but it seemed to get better by Belsavis. (Not as good as it was on Balmorra, mind you, but better.)

Your spreadsheet... it's a lot nicer-looking than mine. (Looks like it's less work to keep up-to-date, too.)

True, but 300 years allows a nice, stable status-quo to develop in the Republic and Jedi Order before the Sith invasion. If it were right after KotOR 2, they'd still be in the thick of the aftermath of the Jedi Civil War. So I'm glad that they allowed a healthy amount of time to pass. But it seems like they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too—they can't simultaneously stick stuff from KotOR into it and have it take place a long time after it.