How competent was Sauron? From a villanous perspective, was

He lost because he was fated to lose. Literally everything was in his favour, down to ring being impossible to be willingly destroyed even by a hobbit. But then Gollum happened.

>>54015523
While true, he was also equally fated to win.

At least in the main trilogy, we never see any evidence that his ability to corrupt or control are based on much of anything except accident of "birth".

So that's my question. Did he do everything right, and lost to plotarmor? Was he just born powerful and then traipsed through everything by virtue of his nature? Was he cunning and clever, or just too powerful to be meaningfully opposed by mortals?

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>>54015440
He would have won if the universe was impartial, and only lost due to providential reasons. Sauron maybe could have been a bit more reflective on his own assumptions about power, which would have let him see his areas of vulnerability particularly to soft power, but his inability to do that was explicitly the personality flaw the council of the Wise were exploiting.

>>54015440
Neither. This might come as a shock to you, but you can have a villain who isn't a complete caricature and thinks only in extremes.

> With the knowledge he possessed at the time, what could he have done better?
Gandalf says this quite explicitly. Have you even read the books? He could have realized what the good guys plan was, but of course that would require him to think that not everyone was as greedy as he was, and guard his own realm like a steel trap. Gondor and Rohan and the rest aren't going anywhere, and the Ring itself resists storage.

>>54015440
He had his good moments and had some wits, but in the end of the day he was foolish, cowardly and self-obsessed. Just like Melkor.

He's a classic ahrimanic/satanic figure after all.