One problem here is World of Warcraft doesn’t spend a lot of time showing us character duels or even telling us about them. Arthas the Lich King beats Jaina/Sylvanas in the HoR (although is notably stopped by a cave-in???), but appears to lose to Tirion at Light’s Hope and loses again to Tirion and friends at ICC. He’s also damaged pretty quickly by plague bombs, or at least chooses to retreat rather than face the Horde and Alliance alone. I’m not including Death Knight Arthas encounters here. Bolvar the Lich King, fwiw, is easily beaten by Sylvanas at ICC, but that’s probably neither here nor there.
That’s not exactly an impressive win tally, but again the nature of the game means there are hardly any characters with an extensive single combat resume.
Jaina’s not really any different. She’s arguably the most potent mage alive and has an impressive leadership resume, but she doesn’t really duel people, shonen-style. In fact I can’t even really think of a time she does go one-on-one.
All this is to say that it might be a ‘Batman with prep time’ sort of scenario, to use a popular phrase. If Jaina was teleported to Icecrown to fight peak LK Arthas, she might be able to beat him, or at least escape, but Arthas is pretty strong. But could Jaina craft a spell or strategy to defeat peak LK Arthas if given the time? I would say almost certainly. That’s what her character is. She leverages her own ability plus those of other people to achieve victory.
Jaina has become a deus ex machina with all her power ups, so she would most likely mop the floor with Arthas. I mean, just look at how she was able to hold him off in the Hall of Reflection dungeon back in Wrath. And that was without any Titanic power ups.
I think a lot of people are discounting the fact that he toyed with “the most powerful fighting force Azeroth has ever known” before casually killing them with the flick of his wrist.
Running away from Lights Hope I see as just another example of an “I’ll get you next time Gadget” moment. He obviously wanted to draw the absolute strongest adventurers to Icecrown, and for all we know that was part of his ploy. He then froze Tirion just to taunt him and it took a literal miracle last second deus ex machina to defeat him.
The Blight idk. That stuff just seems super destructive to everything it comes across. I don’t really count that against him anymore than saying a character couldn’t swim around in magma therefore they aren’t very powerful.
I fully admit there are plenty of Arthas fanboys with a distorted view of his power level, like ‘hurr he oneshots Goku nocap’, but he’s still one of the most powerful beings Azeroth has ever seen. Jaina lifted a big ship? Arthas raised an Aspect’s consort and bound her to his will.
Jaina was prevented from stopping the Horde breakout party in BFA because some buildings were on fire and she had to leave to help. I know that sounds callous but if she were that powerful you’d think she’d be able to conjure some magical prison or something to lockdown the Horde party while she went to help out, not let them go.
But in the end this all just goes to show Blizzard power levels are completely arbitrary and only restricted by what the story demands at that very moment.
Jaina is a frost mage, first and foremost. She can do other abilities, but frost is her mastery.
The Lich king doesn’t care, he was frozen in ice for like 10 years. And he has more than just frost in his arsenal.
In fact, he was throwing up walls of Ice like it was nothing in that dungeon. An ability Jaina, a Frost mage, just recently learned to do to that effect.
Arthas was in his own league. He played with us (and Tirion) the whole encounter, and died literally because of a miracle. Years later, we are more experienced, and Jaina is barely holding us off in Dazar’alor so the fleet could escape.
I think it was tweeted by a dev at some point that the only mortal who could match Arthas would be Lei Shen in his prime. Given that was a couple years ago, but those two were powerhouses, both were basically worshipped as gods to their people.
Jaina is strong, but like Malfurion strong. Can easily change the tide of battle, and super destructive when they get pissed off, but Malf can’t stand up to Arthas.
No. Jaina’s extremely powerful, arguably one of the most powerful mages on Azeroth in the modern day, but Arthas with both Frostmourne and the Helm was basically a god.
I know that she (or Sylvanas in the Horde version) were able to stand against him for awhile in ICC, but we later learned that he was just testing us during all that time and could have killed everyone at any moment, like he does in the final battle.
There’s also a narrative reason why faction NPCs shouldn’t be at the power levels of the Big Bads of the story: it would make us pointless. If Jaina/Malfurion/Thrall can just solo someone like the Lich King…then they should just do that, right away, and save a lot of lives and hassle. I mean, it would be crazy for them not to do it.
I do wonder, however, how current Jailor-empowered Sylvanas would fare against Arthas, given how easily she took down Bolvar. Would her new death powers have been enough to protect against Frostmourne? I guess we’ll never know, but I suspect it would have been a hell of a fight.
Arthas never intended to kill any of us or Tirion before Icecrown. He wanted the strongest mortals the world could foster to face him so he could make an elite collection of champions to serve him. He was never fighting at anything near full power. The only time we actually threatened him was when Tirion destoyed his heart in the Cathedral of Darkness, which weakened him greatly. Despite this fact, he still slapped the entire raid party and killed everyone but Tirion like it was nothing.
Arthas lost to a sudden miracle of the Light and his own hubris. We just happened to be lucky enough to be there to finish him off.
Jaina stands no chance alone. She’s mortal and has clear limits. An Arthas who isn’t toying around rolls her with ease. Even an Arthas that plays around with her has like… a 1% chance of losing imo. He’s just too damn powerful.
All my money on Arthas. He one shot the entire raid after getting bored of fighting us and only lost because he had to do the generic super villain monologue.
While a lot of what you say is true, not all of it is. Arthas fully intended to kill Tirion at Light’s Hope. He knew Tirion was a real threat to him, and so threw the entire Acherus DK corps into Light’s Hope just to draw Tirion out.
He didn’t come up with his plan to turn us until after TIrion defeated him. But, as you said, his hubris got the better of him. Arthas thought he could take Tirion at the Frozen Throne, but Tirion was actually able to kill him.
i just disagree tbh, Jaina has some very impressive feats. Jaina is no slouch. Arthas was a major power house, but so is Jaina.
Jaina’s power gets exaggerated because of faction war salt and she benefits from the new narrative tools Blizzard’s been using the last few years. We had a reversal of this back in WoD, even, where people were saying Khadgar was stronger than Jaina, but in reality he just benefited from the cutscenes and such that Blizzard really hadn’t used much up until then.
Arthas as the Lich King was basically a demi-god. He wiped out an entire team of Azeroth’s strongest champions in a blink, when he got bored. Jaina was able to fight him a bit in Halls of Reflection, but she still had to run, and it’s arguable he didn’t want to kill her yet. And this was when she was powerful enough to freeze and then mass teleport a small army of people out of Undercity, a feat matched only by, as far as we’ve seen, Khadgar. Current Jaina would be able to hold her own, for maybe a short while, but we thought Fordring would be able to as well, and he was frozen instantly in the Arthas fight.
You do understand he was just toying with us in the Halls of Reflection right? Especially considering he proceeds to one shot the entire raid later on.
I’m surprised he even needs to hear this, considering even in Halls of Reflection he is 100% going to kill the entire party and Jaina if he catches up. At the end, Jaina accepts that she’s going to die when there’s no where else to run. We’re saved by Deus ex Airship.
Everyone’s example that Arthas wins is a dungeon from 2009? So we just absolutely neglect the 11-12 year power increase Jains goes through? She’s a last boss of a raid where she drops bodies and dips out victorious. wotlk arthas stomps no doubt but you’re high if you think that happens to BFA Jaina! This isn’t even including the fact that Jaina is a key player in Shadowlands and is gonna continue only to get stronger!.. that being said Jailor Anduin stomps boffum
Never underestimate a mage. Killing him maybe not but freezing him and sending him through a portal into the deep dark to eventually fall onto another unexpecting planet like some old god certainly.
Hardly victorious. You need to remember, she lost that fight (winners don’t flee) against a small group of horde while technically, the Lich King would of beaten those same group if not for a literal Act of God.
