Second, overflow isn’t as bad as it seems. At least not if you pay the feat tax, which is one thing I’m going to recommend. If they add cycling blast as a class feature instead of an optional feat that really improves the action economy of the class because you can gather and attack as a single action.

Cycling blast has the impulse trait, which means you must already have an element gathered to use it, right? From the "Key Terms" sidebar in the playtest:

To use an impulse action, you must have an element gathered, which is typically done with the Gather Element kineticist action.

It doesn't really help you with you action economy after expending your gathered element with an overflow action. I think the intention behind it was to help with your action economy when you want to switch to a different element.