Ruffly speaking, there are four different types of channeler fight.

1) Channelers Vs non-channelers.

2) Armies with channelers fighting other armies with channelers.

3) A running battle between two channelers.

4) A face to face battle between channelers.

In the first kind of fight, the non-channelers are basically being asked to storm a machine gun/artillery encampment... A encampment equipped with a force field generator... A force field, that might as well be made out of cuendillar for all non-channelers can even do to it. In effect, the non-channelers only hope it to catch the channeler while their pants are down. Get in and take out the encampment before the guns are loaded and locked onto their targets. Otherwise, what follows is less of a "fight", so much as just straight up suicide on the part of the non-channeler.

In the second kind of fight, both sides have said encampment, and just as importantly, these encampments are capable of knocking each others rounds straight out of their air. Thus allowing for the non-channeling armies to actually survive long enough to matter, rather then simply die within a couple of minutes by the hundreds of thousands... Mind, "armies" is a key word, as this doesn't really scale down to small scale fights. In small scale fights between channelers, non-channelers are much more easily singled out and dealt with, and thus are simply in the way. A liability at best.

With the third type... Well, you're basically talking about most of Rand's fights with the Forsaken. Neither side knows the exact location of the other, and thus throws around a lot of big and flashy weaves trying to hit them. The side that is fleeing also tends to setup a lot of traps trying to catch the side doing the chasing.

Now the fourth type, this like Rand's fight with Lanfear, and goes to the heart and soul of what truly makes channelers so deadly, particular close up. It isn't their raw power. It's the One Power's mechanics. The ability to direct the OP with thought. The invisible and intangible nature of threads. The multitasking of weaves. The enhanced mental reflexes... Fighting a Channeler isn't really like fighting your typical mage. With gestures and/or incantations and the like.

With a channeler... The human part is more akin to the core of a ghostly tentacle monster, with dozens of tendrils, and the ability to shoot spells out of the ends of them.

A more typical mage, like say, someone that needed objects like ter'angreal to cast spells... Would just get ripped to bloody pieces in a face to face fight with a channeler. The mage only has two arms, and one mouth. While the channeler has upwards of six "tentacles", all of which can move far faster.

... Anyway, back to the game. CRPG combat is all about party management and tactics. Given that non-channelers can't really "fight" the One Power, they thus become almost completely useless. Even so much as a ter'angreal that gives someone armor made out of Air, and... Non-channelers can actually do anything against it. They can hammer at it with their swords until the coming of the next age, and they aren't even going to make a dint in it.

And if you have an actual channeler at your disposal? Tided off weaves are really freaking broken Vs non-channelers. After all, non-channelers cannot see weaves, so they have no idea what a channeler is even doing with the One Power. A more... "Loot focused" channeler, could calmly walk around an entire town, just talking with people about the weather... The entire time placing weaves on everyone he meets set to kill them in an hour or so, and they'd never know.

Then there is just the fact that, much like with shields of Air, a non-channeler cannot actually "do" anything about flows of Air they have found themselves wrapped up in, and given that a channeler can tie off weaves to last however long they wish them to, up to and including "indefinitely". A non-channeler that finds themselves in such a predicament is... Kind of screwed.

And aside from the aspect of how over power channelers are Vs non-channelers, there is simply the fact that... There isn't really any such thing as "channeling brigands" in WoT. The closest you'd get is the occasional False Dragon.

There... Is really no need for a channeler to ever go outlaw in WoT. There are Darkfriends, of course, but they hardly wear signs on foreheads, and simply keep within the assorted channeling organizations. No point in robbing people in them there hills, when you're basically entitled to a high social position simply "because"... or you know, a leash around your neck, but they aren't likely to go outlaw either.

Besides, if a channeler did go outlaw, those very same channeling organizations would fall upon them like a ton of bricks.

So... Basically, 99.9999% of random fights in such a game, would be up against mooks so far beneath your notice, that the game might as well just have a toggable button that causes all hostile units within a hundred feet of you to just automatically explode without you having to pay them any actual attention.