1- His starting quest could be more than 2 turns of cards drawing away from his starting location (10 range),and will spawn a character he probably wont be the first one to reach because he is more than 10 location away now.

2- His wisdom is too small. He have advantage in fighting (being moderatly powerfull and very surviving) but with such a small wisdom he have nearly squat chance of hitting monsters or minions instead of perils.

3- His power doesnt goes with his stats. He is supposed to be able to keep moving if he doesnt defeat the adversary... but with his small wisdom he will rarely meet monsters and his huge strength means he rarely will have cards left or fail to defeat it, even if he still meet one.

4- The choice of hero is before the mission draw and there is several mission that he cant help accomplish easily :

a- Less than one corruption cards. He IS a corruption magnet with 1-2 Wisdom.

b- 5 Favor between heros. He is a favor burner because of the corruption, drawing less of them , stacking less of them, needing more to remove corruption cards.

c- KIlling Minions and clearing monsters : Once again and surprisingly it is something he is NOT GOOD at doing. For 2 influence and 1 move Sauron's Player could hide his foes away from him, making him totally not contributing...

5- He need more rest action and thus make Sauron Counter move faster. He will take more corruption so will need to rest to remove them more often than not.

While I agree that Thalin is not a good choice for a one on one game (for the reasons you stated, mostly wisdom score) he is a valid choice for a 3 hero+Sauron game. The game is about cooperation between heroes - if Sauron concentrates his efforts on stopping the dwarf (by moving minions, putting influence on his way etc. ) the other 2 heroes are free to do what they want. Plus, it's good to have Thalin for the final fight, should all else fail

That's what I am arguing. Because it take so little to thwart Thalin effort than the others I dont think he is as much helping as another one.

Blocading a 2 or 3 Wis character require deliberate effort from Sauron, Blocading Thalin just need the odd and so influence point.

In a cooperative game everyone have to had his share, and if all that he give is a hand in a potential endgame encounter, where he isn't even sure to be the best choice...

Add to that that there is a choice of 3 between 5 heroes and I cant really of someone I wouldn't pick up rather than him...

Wich heroes does you feel weaker than Thalin ?

My friends have learned not to play Argalad, the elf, when I play Sauron (well atleast the smart ones have). I easy incapacitate him every game by simply sending the Mouth of Sauron after him. Between the corruptione each combat and the number of 'Charge' cards in the Zealot deck, the elf rarely gets anything off as his 4:1 ranged:melee ratio causes me to cancel most of his ranged cards with my charges. And even when the other heroes come to the aid of Argalad to take out the Mouth of Sauron, I am then placing plots on the other side of the board and setting up monsters, being sure to put any Zealots in Argalad's path.