Sorry...by "greater evil", I meant the "evil being who is greater", not more evil.
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Gorthaur_cruel said that he thought balrogs were weaker because the same gandalf that defeated a Balrog was also almost killed be a few wargs in "The Hobbit" At that point in Tolkien's writing he hadn't written anything on Valar and Maiar. At that point I think Gandalf was portrayed as just a wizard. If Tolkien had written him as a maiar he could have easily killed a few wargs.
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Actually, he had written about the Valar and the Maiar, as well as balrogs and dragons before he wrote the hobbit. It was called "The Book of Lost Tales".
Even if he hadn't, "The Hobbit" is viewed as canon, at least by most people. Even if Tolkien hadn't thought about maiar back then, what he wrote there must certainly be regarded as "true", as he had published it.
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Tolkien's view of alot of things changed through out his writting. In his earlier writing Balrogs were not maiar. And there were alot of them. There were times when Tolkien said that Morgoth sent a host of Balrogs. In his earlier writing there were many Balrogs. Dragons were probably more powerful then. But later his view of Balrogs changed and Tolkien said that there were never more than 7 Balrogs and that they were maiar and alot stronger. That also explains how Glaurung had balrogs in his train.
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Since there were so few Balrogs it explains why the Valar were driven back when the Dragons came. There were alot more Dragons so if they all came at the same time it would have been hard for the Valar since they were greatly out numbered. If there were only 7 Balrogs they wouldn't have been much trouble for the Valar. And because the Valar didn't have to fight all of them because Glorfindel and Ecthelion also slew one each. Gandalf killed one later so the Valar only killed about 3 or 4. Because the Dragons are also very powerful the Valar would have had more trouble then because there were so many more Dragons.[/quote]
Tolkien's view of Balrogs changed, true, but just because there were more dragons than balrogs doesn't mean they're weaker. It never really says how many winged dragons there were, anyway. Also, it specifically says that the Balrogs "were of no avail" against the forces of the Valar.
Oh, and slightly OT, the Valar never participated in the War of Wrath, IMO. Their leader was a maia, and it is constantly referred to as the "Forces of the Valar", and never "the Valar". It was comprised of Elves+Maiar, without any Valar.
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Balrogs more powerfull. Lets say that there is no debate on dragons actually being Maia spirits. If this is the case, then in my mind, *if dragons were Maia spirits*, then they were trapped (by Morgoth) in serpents bodies. To me, this signifies a significant lower class of Maia spirit than a Balrogs.
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Like I said, non-Maiar are somtimes more powerful than Maiar. I believe that dragons were created in more or less the same way as Carcharoth. Carcharoth was a wolf that Morgoth put his power into, and it grew strong. It killed Huan (and got killed himself in the process, but my point still stands), who had defeated Sauron, the greatest maia of Morgoth. Thus, Carcharoth, a non-Maia, is more powerful than Sauron. You could argue that only by a wolf could Huan be slain, but that is only a prophecy. It does not mean that Huan is more powerful than anything other than a wolf, and Sauron had turned himself into a wolf anyway.