My first instinct is to call bullshit, for Sandersonian issues, but this might actually be a way to work that bit of idiocy into actual functionality of the Power.

The only real instance shown in the ACTUAL books of someone's apparent "Talent" exceeding the theoretical limits of their strength was the Kinswoman who was good at shielding, although that wasn't really a Talent, she just said that her ability had become honed over time to something like a Talent. She was not exceeding known limitations, she was simply doing a possible thing, but got very good with extensive practice, that being one of the few skills she might need/get to practice over the years, with the Kins' avoidance of the Power. It doesn't explain Androl's apparent limit breaking, at all, particularly since he had nothing like her opportunities to practice honing his skill.

I'm still inclined to doubt this explanation, because needing to travel or wanting move quickly might explain a Talent for Traveling if Traveling had a temporal component, or range limitation. Androl makes very big gateways and might have a superior ability to aim them, such as when he makes the lava one. There isn't really any normal or naturally instinctive reason to be able to make a very big hole in the air that is larger than anyone else knows how to do it.

My non-story explanation for Androl's Talent lies in the knowledge that B-Sand claimed the character as his own, and in a kind of authorial humble-brag, made him super-powered, but with a layer of deniability. This lets the insecure & immature fan-fiction author insert his personal idealized character into the story while weakly dodging the Mary-Sue accusation. Androl isn't the strongest and best in ways that would obviously break the narrative and cause readers to say "Hey, where'd he come from and why didn't anyone mention this before?" Instead, the author gives him a fake weakness that is offset by his singular advantage, so as to not actually impede him at all, like Daredevil's blindness & superhuman other senses. Who cares if Androl(B-Sand) can't wield as much of the Power as Rand or Taim or Logain? He could drop a mega-gateway of lava on their asses! Especially for someone like Sanderson who seems proud of his creative utilization of the rules of magic systems. Michael Stackpole pulled a similar scam in his Star Wars pastiches, making a Jedi character who was handicapped by not being able to do some of the things with the Force we saw the Jedi doing in the films, but with other powers we never saw, that with some creativity, might have made him even more powerful. Like Androl, he had an extensive backstory with lots of implied adventures, and many other skills that make him seem more competent than most of the characters training to use the supernatural ability established by a superior author.

Who what now? The only group I can think of like that are the Kin in Ebou Dar, all of whom were Tower trained before assuming the former role. I would say that Sumeko came into her ability the same way that Nynaeve did, not being limited by the Tower's teaching and taking a more insightful approach. Given the numbers of the Kin, and the rather limited sphere of acceptable channeling activities, it stands to reason that the law of averages would eventually throw up someone with extraordinary skills, who might also hit on better methods, just because she didn't know it was impossible to use Fire & Earth in Healing weaves. The longevity of the Kin means that the weaves would be honed in a career that surpassed an Aes Sedai lifetime, and while the Kin might forbid teaching and training, I can't imagine that the knowledge would not be transmitted through the group, to maintain their ruses with simple corrections, if nothing else. At the stage at which Kinswomen join, they are mostly beyond the point of the kind of unconscious learning that led to Nynaeve's superior weave. They are all channeling consciously, and mostly considered safe to leave the Tower on their own, which means the sisters are sure they are not going to start channeling spontaneously. While there are runaways, I would imagine that those who are still dangerous and untaught are among the nine out of ten the Kin arrange to be recaptured. I think it much more likely that independent-minded or self-taught channelers are more likely to be let go from the Tower, due to the difficulty of "correcting" their habits or their own resistance to subordination, and thus find their way to the Kin. In other words, these traits observed in the Kin are not caused by the Kin's circumstance, rather the Kinswomen tend to select for things that cause those traits.

Do they? Maybe a lot of them do, but there seems to be a difference in the use of the word Talent, sometimes meaning a specific use of the Power, and other times referring to the ability to perform a particular feat. Traveling, for instance, is a Talent in the former sense, but not all that rare in the latter sense. It might be that Cloud Dancing is, like Traveling, a more widespread ability in the natural channeler population, but which the Tower lacks the knowledge or ability to use. The much more likely result, rather than a conveniently higher distribution of a pass/fail ability in a particular population, is that the Sea Folk specialize in that ability for obvious reasons of the necessity, while the Tower doesn't bother. Their fatalistic inclinations (the Wheel weaves as the Wheel wills), shared by even the most determined and iconoclastic of their brainwashed graduates (notably Moriaine and Cadsuane), changing the weather is not all that likely to occur to them. And their policy in opposition to experimentation would preclude any but the most fortuitously gifted from figuring out the rules of weather working that would enable greater effects or more complex workings. I think weather would definitely be one of those areas RJ alluded to real-world science rules coming into play. And that particular sphere of activity would be the strongest counter-argument to this original notion, now that I think about it. The vast majority of people in WoT are from agrarian communities. Even the city people are more closely tied to nature than the modern world, and the most immediate impulse of ANYONE in extended contact and interaction with nature is to end said contact and interaction in any way possible. If Talents were the results of formative desires, doing SOMETHING about the weather would be a far more frequently occurring motivation than we apparently see.


Which seems much more likely, from what we see of the mechanisms of channeling.

He was actually referring to the place through which you move while Skimming. The implication I took from that line was that it is related to the way Tel'Aran'Rhiod exists between the threads of the Pattern. Rand recalled Asmodean saying that about the Skimming place, and not understanding the reference, which I took to be a signal to the readers, who had Verin's explanation of T'A'R just a couple of books prior. That would explain how the method of travel with Skimming is so malleable to the intentions and expectations of the channeler, including Rand using a staircase the first few times he tried it, and his issues with creating the platform.
When? He first Skimmed impulsively to catch Ba'alzamon at Tarwin's Gap, and he didn't do it again consciously until Rhuidean to go after Asmodean. His first Traveling was into the palace in Caemlyn. He had been taught the weave, to a degree, but couldn't do it, in part, seemingly, because he had trouble grasping the "learning" of the starting ground. It wasn't until his traumatized hyper-awareness of the moment he lost his friend and his first lover that he was able to make the weave work. He was impatient and pressed for time often enough before that that he should have been able to learn Traveling at some point, if that was how it worked. Egwene's rediscovery of the same thing was entirely intellectual and no formative or personal inclinations led that way. Aviendha came the closest to learning how to Travel in that manner, and her ability was impeded. Nynaeve had a similar impediment to Healing, until she was forced to do it without her herbs in tDR, an experience she compared to flaying herself.

I think the circumstances in which you first use a weave or utilize a Talent might affect how you do that in the future, but it seems entirely distinct from whether or not your innate abilities incline to having those Talents at all.

That was an application, nothing to do with the actual working of the Power itself. And she prepared for it by having the candidates start small for practice.

That would have been more on the order of Nynaeve's inability to Heal without herbs or Aviendha's shame-block for Traveling, or the various handicaps under which wilders labor, rather than something fundamental to the process of learning new weaves or Talents. It could also be an indication that the Aes Sedai have been testing for the wrong things, and that many Yellows were not actually Talented at the art as it was known in the AoL. Moghedian claimed that modern Healing was sort of like first aid or emergency treatment in the AoL, so maybe that weave was something that others who were not genuinely Talented at Healing could use when pressed by circumstances. Note that it uses fewer of the Powers, and the Asha'man are implied to have learned something similar from Taim, as Flinn relates, noting that it is painful compared to other forms of Healing, and that it was the same weave applied to any injury or ailment, of any degree, just like the modern standard White Tower Healing weave, which might not hurt, but seemed equally traumatic in different ways. Given that proper Healing doesn't seem to take much more time than the crappy kind, the only reason to prefer the latter in emergencies would be that it was more widely accessible. It's possible it had a lower strength cost and was thus better for larger numbers of patients in a short time, but that doesn't seem to be a good enough reason from a time when angreal and sa'angreal were replaceable, and linking was a common practice. It seems much more likely to me that it was more readily accessible to those who lacked the Talent for the proper form of Healing, and thus such Healers would only be pressed into service when there was not enough time or too much work for the real Healers to get to everyone.
IIRC it was Shemerin who was open to Nynaeve joining, since she was the one who taught her Yellow Ajah secrets. None of the sisters in Salidar were all that welcoming to Nynaeve's experimentation, which I took as a commentary on their mindsets, being more politically active than Healing nerds. Rosil was a Sanderson character anyway, so she isn't really a trustworthy source, given his idiocy. I don't even recall her being that open, aside from on the issue of Nynaeve's Aes Sedai status. And for all we know, that kind of amenability might have been why Egwene picked her. Not even I would seriously contend Egwene was deliberately acting to hurt the Tower, and to paraphrase Wisconsin's greatest legislator, if (s)he were merely stupid, the law of averages would mean that some of her decisions would be in the interests of the Tower. Having a MoN who is uncharacteristically receptive to innovation might be one of those instances. In most cases, you don't want that in a MoN, since someone needs to keep the kids from blowing up the Tower, but the effectiveness of the brainwashing program means that is the best hope for the future of innovation in the Tower, and you don't want someone who is going to automatically quash such attitudes in the initiates.
Sadism is an act of power. Much more likely that her appetite for power manifested in misuse of Healing, because that was where her brain was at. Sadism is a pleasure of the jaded. Psychotic little kids who are sadistic at such a fundamental level would probably be screened out early in the AoL HotS procedures. The description of her personality makes it seem more probable that she had an entitlement complex that manifested as perceiving a right to do what she wanted with her patients. In other words, she didn't go into Healing because she was sadistic, Healing put her in circumstances where the most readily available outlet for her need for stimulation and attitude of entitlement was in the subversion of her ostensible function. Other Forsaken chose different vices, because of their life situations. Baalthamel, for instance, went into more conventional depravity, because there isn't much chance to indulge one's evil nature as a scholar. Developing a Healing Talent so you can get close enough to victims to indulge a fundamental sadism is too much of a long term strategy, rather than a formative instinct that might bend one's One Power abilities in a particular direction.
IIRC, Siuan stopped seeing ta'veren when she was severed.
Heh heh.