The Balrog vs The Witch King

[CSteefel]

Originally Posted by obloquy

The hierarchy is pretty rigid, and generally holds, but as I said above, the more powerful Eldar may overlap with the lesser Maiar. Glorfindel in particular, though not the greatest of the Eldar, is said to be on par with the Maiar. Certainly this holds true also for Cirdan, Luthien, Galadriel, Ecthelion, Gil-galad, Elrond, Feanor, Fingolfin, Thingol, and others.

The greatest of the Atani perhaps overlap the least of the Eldar similarly, but the Witch-King is not one of the greatest of the Atani. He does not actually hold a ring of power, Sauron keeps them. He may have been a powerful Man before his corruption, and was perhaps more powerful afterward, but we know that he still fears Glorfindel, Aragorn, and even Boromir I (see appendix).

Well, at least this is a more reasonable set of statements. I was reacting to the blanket statements of Mansun above.

I believe both Raynor and I have now said that the Balrog would probably triumph in a match up with the Witch King.

So the issue is mainly whether the power of the Witch King was augmented, or in fact, what the nature of that power is. I personally believe that this power is fluid and perhaps hard to define (harder than, say, the power of the Balrog) because so much of the power emanates from Sauron. This explains in part to me the very different behavior of the Nazgul (and Witch King) when faced with various foes.