Jedi Radiant

One more item, however...performing the "thunderclap" (if I remember the term correctly) seems to me to be as hard as catching a dart in the air, from a dexterity/hand-eye-coordination standpoint. Kaladin is there already, in my mind!

Yes, Taln is over 4.5K years old. Much older, in fact. However, 4.5K years is just the time since the last desolation. In the intervening time, he has been in "hell", being tortured, and not training. In fact, as far as I can interpret, the Heralds were only on Roshar for brief periods of Desolations (when they could actually practice their martial arts), with the majority of their time spent being "distracted". Therefore, I believe there is a supernatural explanation to his abilities. Can't practice much with blades under your eyelids (and whatever else is going on). With that said, let's not forget Taln was a Herald. This is a person that was given the ability to lead the fight during numerous Desolations against the voidbringers. Yes, the KR were given powers patterned after the Heralds. But the Heralds could still have powers/abilities beyond what the spren can grant. There could be other attributes a Herald have that a KR would not get, so we don't know if Kaladin would eventually be a able to do what Taln can. If its even Taln...

At this point, we are not positive what the ability of regrowth gives a person, as far as I know. What if it allows even greater healing than a "normal" surgebinder gets? I know a shardblade through the chest=burnt eyes and death, but the possibility may be open for Ym's return.

While I agree that som of Kaladin's skills likely come from his Nahel bond, let's not discount his natural (god-given and self-trained) abilities altogether. Kaldin showed natural aptitude with the staff in the flashback in WOK (when he was still in the village), which I would assume was before he encounterd Syl. Also, don't forget, Kaladin was able to kill a large chasmfiend without any access to Syl and her abilities, as far as I can tell. Granted, he had Shallan distracting the beast and he had a shardlade at the end, but it took 3 full shardbearers to do the same in WOR. I admit Elhokar (one of the three full shardbearers)was a bit of a distraction, but Dalinar and Adolin also had Saldeas with a shardbow, and numerous muggles shooting arrows as well. Long story short, I have a hard time attributing Kaladin's baddassery entirely to his Nahel bond. Kaladin admittedly learned quicker than most, but I believe it has been stated multiple times that he trained more, and harder, than most others. C'mon folks, let's give some credit where credit is due!