Quote Originally Posted by Torweld View Post
1) The battle at Weathertop was inconclusive. Both sides were merely delayed and inconvenienced.
True, but that wasn't just the Witch-king vs. Gandalf. That was the Nazgul ganging up on Gandalf, at night when their powers were strongest, and they still couldn't get him. What we see later in the book appeared to be the Witch-king channeling Sauron's power, which is why he's extra-scary all of a sudden but then of course Gandalf had had an 'upgrade', too. The Witch-king may simply not have realised that.

The impression we get from the book is that trapped alone at Weathertop, Gandalf did better than even Glorfindel would have done in the same situation. That's a fair measure of his power.

2) It is never clear the true extent of Gandalf's power. We know he is Maiar, but we don't know what that really means. Most of what Gandalf actually accomplishes in terms of showy magic can be attributed to his bearing the Elven Ring of Fire
It's not attributed to that in the books. The Three Rings of the Elves weren't made as weapons, the power of the Ring Gandalf bore was to rekindle lost hope and courage.

The thing about Gandalf's power is that he was supposed to fully exercise it only when he absolutely had to (this was a plot device, to prevent powerful magic from dominating the plot) and not to use it to directly oppose Sauron's will. Read the Silmarillion and a very different picture of Maiar emerges, as there they were under no such constraint.