I also agree that Nynaeve may be a poor shield-talent. The only thing I don't really agree with you on here is the level of Talent. I see it as a wild card just like overall strength. Naturally the majority of people fall into the "Average" range, but I think that alone will show us a wide disparity in gateway size. Thus Beonin appears much stronger than she is and Flinn weaker than his true strength. If Beonin had an "average" talent perhaps her gateway would only by 6x6 instead it's 7x7 ... There are a handful of women at her strength level, so we could in theory see gateways as low as 5x5 is we had a woman with a poor Talent, and that would certainly be a noticeable difference from Beonin as the gateway would be roughly half the size.