[Raynor]

They could not defeat Sauron by force of arms.

You are ignoring my line of reasoning in that paragraph; I was referring to the moment in time Sauron became mightier in arm forces. There was a buildup in his forces, he didn’t enjoy his military superiority for the better part of the third age.

No, we can’t speculate that because for much of the Third Age they were not contesting him, they just sat back for the most part.

I was discussing “for how long were they capable” not “what they actually did”. Although what you stated is correct, it doesn’t address my statement.

Exactly, they didn’t have that.

In order to conclude that, we would need to know, as I stated previously:
- when would Sauron be fully prepared to attack them
- what period of time they needed to build their armies with the help of the one ring, in order to defeat Sauron
- what is the time they got the ring

As far as I know, at least the second factor is down to speculation, but I would welcome your suggestions for these. We know that Sauron wasn’t ready to fully attack the ringlord-less west at the time of the Pellenor Fields, in 15th of march, 3019. When would he be fully prepared to attack a ringlord? I don’t know. As to the third factor, that is simply down to an agreement; the sooner they got it, the quicker they would proceed to building forces, with more motivation, and, possibly, with more efficiency. Also, the sooner they would build their forces, the weaker Sauron would be. As I said, some timelines (placing the appearance the ringlord sooner in the third age) would favor the west, some would favor Sauron (placing said event later) in the third age); if the ringlord would appear only around the time of the council of Elrond or the likes, in 3018, he/she would have a serious handicap.

By Gandalf, nobody else.

But Sauron facing opponents individually is not what I had in mind. You are conveniently taking into consideration only a one-on-one battle. While this seems to be defining some Hollywood style combats, I have a hard time imagining a scene in which several tens/hundreds/thousands of warriors would line up to fight Sauron individually. Even in that case, sheer number of individual fights, or just accidents, would allow us to consider that Sauron can be defeated. As far as I know, no embodied person in Middle-Earth enjoys invulnerability.

But regardless of this, this little debate is a waste of time.

Err, why do you post then?