You could argue that they waited too long in Salidar, and that we had too much internal politics and squabbling in the Rebel camp, although on the other hand you could also make a good case that Egwene needed screen time to show her gaining experience and becoming more than a puppet among the Rebels. But Egwene's PR offensive inside the Tower to allow her to become Amyrlin Seat felt too rushed if anything, rather than too slow. And it's hard to see any alternative way out of the crisis that doesn't involve actual fighting between the two sides, which would've made quick reconciliation and more or less unified acting in the final two books impossible. Certainly just having a special talent or two wouldn't have gained her a shot at the Amyrlin Seat - she'd just have been petted on the head and interrogated about it.

I don't agree about Elayne's plotline either, btw - she's one of my favourite characters, and her plotlines were the main thing carrying me through those slow books. There too, she needed screen time to establish herself as viable candidate, and there just was a lot of politics that had to happen. With regards to Perrin's hunt for Faile, that began to bore me too, and perhaps could've been shorter, but yet again, I can see reasons for giving it as much space as it got - to make the Seanchan alliance credible and set up Khirgan as a character, to tie Alleandre and Morgase to Faile and Perrin, to name just the more obvious ones.