You have to account for Cannoli's polemic style when reading his posts...

You're reducing the Fantasy genre to the epic type you like, and WOT to the aspects of it you like.

I would challenge especially the notion that WOT is about "the RPG elements". WoT was never a showcase for OP deeds. Jordan almost always evaded these questions in Q&A. He never answered directly the X is stronger than Y questions, in his mind that was to be answered if it served the storytelling. He used them mostly socially and psychologically in the series, as an additional device to create power relationships between the characters, and the relationship between each character and the OP, or to the OP. What really interested Jordan was how the characters dealt with all these relationships (it's a central element of the series, and far more pages are devoted to that than to channelling itself). It's not about which weaves Nynaeve or Egwene can and can't do, it's about how Nynaeve and Egwene struggled with power and authority, theirs and others. Cadsuane's strength is only relevant for the massive confidence and legendary authority it gives her over other characters, how she dealt with it, and how others dealt with it.

WOT was so much NOT about RPG style rules of some epic Fantasy (not that all Epic Fantasy has any RPG-style system) that Jordan ends up annoying readers who love those. Forsaken systematically went down because of character flaws and miscalculations, their massive talents or fighting power turning irrelevant, or turning against them. There's no "action RPG" logic behind the storytelling of Jordan. None at all.

Egwene, nominally because of her strength and talent (which Jordan first established in the early books), found herself in a storyline were this power became entirely irrelevant beyond placing her in the position she was. Her talent for Dreaming not acknowledged, her strength in the power no longer playing any role beside being the excuse for which the AS chose her as a puppet Amyrlin, and how Egwene would deal with that, struggle, make huge miscalculations, would lack experience, had some triumphs, some lucky shots, struggled again and finally found herself on her own, devoid of her channelling powers, and found her way back to the top. So yes, "Aes Sedai politics" were very important, it was the fuel to Egwene's storyline.

Nynaeve got a block for most of the series, preventing her from using much her power. Most of her storyline is about other aspects than channelling.

Cadsuane has a device that readers who look at this from the "RPG" perspective hate, because it made her "invulnerable". But obviously Jordan couldn't care less about those feelings, this was never about a OP face-off between Rand (or someone else) and Cadsuane, it was about intoducing a character for whom Rand's channelling, and the fear/awe it inspired would be completely non existant, and how Rand would deal with that. Because it's the power relationship, not the magical powers, Jordan wanted to write about. Had he planned Cadsuane to be an action character in a RPG style story, he would never had given her a "free pass" like that. Because it wasn't what he was writing, there was nothing wrong dramatically with the device he used to have Cadsuane dominate and baffle Rand.

After developping her powers through most of the series, Elayne has been for many books barely able to channel. It's all about how she coped with this in a situation were being a powerful AS no longer counts and she has to use her mind, her leadership qualities and her cunning.

WOT is epic Fantasy and it's not at the same time, not in the more traditional way anyway. Jordan began it as more traditional epic Fantasy (and this lasted a while, since his opening story inflated to the point he split it to write three books of it), but by books 4-5 it rather became a vast chronicle of a secondary world, set during epic times but that wouldn't be only about that or from the traditional angle only, and one that focussed a great deal on the characters, a great deal of important ones - far more than in normal epic fantasy - and their relationship to one another. The "main story", the epic, became only one aspect of the whole. The "main epic" is what Sanderson is doing a fair job at completing. The "whole" of WOT is what he struggles much more with. Around the time of the mid-series, about the change of tone between the first three books and the others, Jordan answered that he always meant the gradual shift, that he wanted the books to feel more like an historical saga, and be written as one, than a traditional epic. For good or bad, in Jordan's mind the "secondary storylines" were a misnommer. It's the readers focussed on the Last Battle epic who consider those disgressions. For Jordan the series were as much about all that than it was about the LB.

Because of that shift in tone, Jordan's audience is much wider than those into the traditional types of Epic Fantasy, that's why the books sold so well. Jordan has gained a huge readership that were into the chronicle, the tone reminescent of the old fashioned historical adventure books à la Dumas, the characters, and the intricate world building. All the sites devoted to the details of WOT, the history of the world, the White Tower characters and WT politics are a testimony to the importance of that "wider audience". Some MB attracted more the traditional Epic Fantasy fans (like this one, and it explains in part its loss of popularity, as the fans of Jordan who are a lot into Epic Fantasy are those who lost interest in the late series. Sites that attract people more into the other aspects, like Theoryland, thrived)

WOT is certainly popular literature and better storytelling than literature that's for sure, and it's Fantasy, but it's not traditional Epic Fantasy (a huge number of readers who are into Epic Fantasy actually grew more and more annoyed as the series progressed, and only a small part are still active and waiting to get the end of the Epic). Books like COT did not annoy nearly as much the also large audience of Jordan that were more into the other aspects of the series (like me, like Cannolli). It was a frustrating book the first time around because none of the stories advanced much and it was obviously a book meant to solve and set in place many things so Jordan could then procede with the faster descent to the finale. I actually liked it, and found it much better than say, the first three books (I don't recognize much the Jordan I like in those, it's there but it's not "unleashed"

Sanderson is aware of these aspects of the series, and he's trying to write the books with everything they should have in it. The result is lacking, that's all. It's not because he's a bad writer, he's just not Jordan. He's better at finishing the epic aspects (following the outline, of course) and dealing with the magic system, and creating action scenes. It's not very surprising, it's what's more natural to him as a writer and those aspects of Jordan have been an inspiration to him for many years. He's less good with the much bigger challenge that was to bring everything put in place by Jordan, all the "details" (to some, integral elements to others) that for a lot of readers were as important as the rest. No surprise there, it was a massive challenge.

I can perfectly understand that the fans who have been hanging to WOT to get the end of the epic, and wished that Jordan cut to the chase already for many books, are sort of happy with the Sanderson output.

I don't like much when they claim it's better than Jordan. Their opinion is skewed by the fact they didn't actually liked Jordan as a whole, his style of storytelling, or the series as a whole. They see WOT as some sort of flawed Epic Fantasy. Their favourite aspects are the main epic (and its characters, mostly Rand and the villains) and the magic system and scenes in which it's used)

People who appreciate the series more as a whole, not only those aspects, are far more disappointed with Sanderson's output (and have been anticipating this when Jordan died. We loved the writer and knew all along we'd sorely miss him in the last books).

I don't really blame Sanderson. I think he probably would have done a better job had Harriet not rushed into the project. I don't even blame her for this, I understand why she felt as she felt. Ideally, I still believe she should have given Sanderson at least a year (or two, if he asked) to fully immerse himself in the series, and go to not one but a few consecutive rereads before he started working. The other mistake was to work with a (public) deadline, that sparked expectactions that Harriet then feared to disappoint. They should never have started publishing before Sanderson finished writing. They were not Jordan (and even he had problems with the larger picture, and that showed in the late series), and they deprive themselves of what writer and editor normally do, that is stepping back to look at the whole and polish it. They repeated the same mistake Jordan has made in the late series, when he built WH to climax with the Cleansing, without advancing the other storylines to that point first. Though very different in tone (and story), TOM has the very same kind of structural problems as COT, only even more important.