As for feeling strong - I rolled a Ret on Beta, and went out and started bashing stuff. It takes about 7-9 GCDs to kill equal level stuff when in the starting gear. That's about 9-11s - better than the Elemental rolled managed, but still pretty slow.
Now, as a comparison I logged into a L100 Ret that I have who doesn't have Ashbringer, etc., at all. He's in i700 gear from the pre-patch event before Legion. That's probably comparatively a bit better than the crud they give pre-gens on the beta, but it's not endgame raid gear, full tier sets plus legendaries, etc. either. He kills random L100 mobs in 5-6 GCDs, which is about 6-7.5s with his Haste. Unlike the beta Ret he has no trouble with 4+ mobs either - the beta Ret needs to use SoV and heal inside the fight, the L100 Legion Ret does not (and his SoV has the same relative strength as the beta version - SoV started strong in Legion and scaled poorly, something that BfA has probably fixed). Oh - he has, despite not having the weapon, much fewer gaps in his rotation too. The beta Ret often has to wait between pulls for enough abilities to come off CD to let them start a pull with more than an auto-attack.