The rarity is not proven at all. Breowin and Androl are at the apex of this Talent, and can do things nobody can because they have this Talent to such great extents. That doesn't mean the Talent is a rarity.

Look, Samitsu is so skilled in Healing she can do things that would usually take a circle of 13 to do (same as Breowin or Androl, really). I think the same can be said of Nynaeve or Flinn or Semirhage. That doesn't mean that Healing in general can be used as a measure of strength, with these people being convenient outliers we can ignore. There is zero evidence that Traveling and Shielding are on or off Talents, where you either have it or you don't. Like all Talents, there's a continuum from the totally clueless to the extremely capable.


But he has no objective measure of the Talent they possess. In general, stronger channelers may have bigger Gateways, but there are bound to be any number of anomalies in this. Unless you can show me proof that Logain did some systematic study comparing channeler strength and Gateway sizes, taking him as an expert on this is ridiculous. Logain is far from an OP expert, and I find it beyond absurd to think that he has been observing Gateway sizes continuously as some means of strength comparison.

That is completely meaningless. This assumes Traveling is an all or nothing Talent, which there is no evidence for. There is no evidence that any Talent is like this.


And...? He sees Rand's full strength, which, unsurprisingly, is greater than his. Then, he correlates that to Rand's larger Gateways, and assumes one is responsible for the other. But Logain has shown no signs of knowing that Traveling is a Talent and people with very low strengths can make extraordinary sized Gateways, or that people with moderate strength and moderate Talent can still make somewhat larger than expected Gateways.

Taking his statement to mean that if someone's Gateway is 85% smaller, they are 85% weaker is quite the leap.


Yes, he's saying correlation implies causation, and you're happily taking him at his word.


So? Asmodean looks at Rand's Gateway, and he knows how strong Rand is, and still says, "impressive". For that matter, Rand was making Gateways that were 4 paces by 4 well before he reached full strength, and attaining full strength doesn't seem to have changed his Gateway size at all. So, back in LoC, when he was as strong as Taim, who is likely as strong as Logain, Rand had a Gateway size of 4x4, which is what he has even now, at LTT level. What does this say about the correlation between strength and Gateway size?

And here's what Asmodean had to say:

Four paces was as large as Rand could make it. There were limits for one man by himself, Asmodean claimed; it seemed there were always limits. The amount of saidin you drew did not matter. The One Power had little to do with gateways, really; only the making. Beyond, was something else. A dream of a dream, Asmodean called it.

Surely, we can agree Asmodean knows better than Logain?

Because Logain is an expert who made some actual calculations, and despite all the evidence to the contrary? I think I'll take Asmodean's word here over Logain any day.