The reason why we self-nerfed lava bending is because in the show lava bending couldn’t really be used to hurt or attack enemies because of how deadly it is
yeah if you stand on lava you would almost immidietly ignite into flames right there and then and die in a few seconds. dont know how quick it would be you only touch it, but you are getting HIT with a lava projectile
@@AuzzieKai every bending will make it easy it kill people irl people irl aren't really that hard to kill just sneak up on them with a knife and that's it although you will be spending the rest of your life on nail
So did an entire naval force, on a full moon... How did they not think to arrive a day later to avoid that being the "strategic masterminds" that conquered the entire planet save for a few places?!
Sure a firebender could melt the metal coming at them, but then they have just traded a fast-moving metal projectile coming at their face for a fast-moving MOLTEN metal projectile coming at their face.
I was rewatching avatar last airbender and I noticed most of the items created by the fire nation were made out of metal. All their tanks, army vehicles and even their buildings and prisons. They had a very industrial style of things and it got me thinking. That’s the only thing in the show that people couldn’t Bend until toph created metal bending. They used it to protect themselves and had an advantage over most benders
How do you think they melted that metal into shape and fueled all of their machines? Combustion, fire, electricity? These are all fuel sources. Of course they were using them
It was broken back then, but in the legend of korra more stuff was made out of purer metal. MUCH more expensive and outright impractical in some areas, yes, but it completely negates metalbending
I said it once, I'll say it again. R-Rated avatar would be awesome and I'd watch the shit out of that. Just imagine: every little bending ability turned up to eleven and fully exploiting the lethal abilities without the constraints of a kids show. Metal bending to slice people in half, lightning bending which leaves more than just a scar, the possibility of bonebending for earth benders, which has been explored in theories, bending not only air but other gasses, the possibilities are literally endless!
@@mussazerfu5539 The way metal bending works - finding impurities inside of the metal to bend - could be applicable to bones as well with minerals like calcium e.g. The idea of bonebending has been explored in some comics as well.
@@vukkulvar9769 If that’s the case she could probably blood bend without a full moon, since she was bending their blood to become ice. Man kyoshi is probably the most op and ruthless avatar ever
I fully agree wit this list. But let's not forget when Aang went to the air bending temple and saw Monk Gyatso's dead body on top of a pile of fire nation bodies. He was a pacifist and still caught a mountain of bodies on his way out. Air bending is the scariest since we only just started to scratch the surface of how deadly it is offensively with Zahir and he had only had bending for a short period of time not even fully able to master it.
Something I don't see often talked about with Firebenders is when Avatar Roku seemed to bend the heat out of the Volcano. If Firebenders can do that, thats a whole bunch of options. Edit: turns out that was Sozen. Point still stands. That’s an underrated ability.
I've always had this idea of waterbenders increasing the temperature to make boiling water instead of freezing it. The idea just sounds so fitting for a villian
Katara literally makes steam in the show to provide cover when they're in that fire nation ship (and a lot of it too, which is kind of crazy in a combat scenario when you think about how hot steam actually is)
one quick point I feel the need to mention, Toph literally stated in legend of Korra that any earth bender can learn metal bending if trained well enough, it's not like lava bending or explosion bending where only certain unique individuals can develop the ability, its more akin to lightning bending: any bender of the base element can learn the technique but they need the right teacher and mental capacity to learn and understand it. the reason Bolin failed to learn it is because he never found the right teacher, focused more on lava bending when he discovered he had the ability, and didn't have the needed mental state to perform the techniques. most metal benders we see in the franchise are stoic, focused, determined, and view their abilities as something to be worked and maintained. their personalities match the process of producing and maintaining metal, but Bolin lacked those personality traits which is what's implied to be the biggest factor stopping him from metal bending. its like how in the first series Zuko couldn't produce his own lightning not because he lacked the ability outright but because the technique required a clear focused mind, and Zuko was always struggling with his emotional imbalance
They also say in legend of korra when korra learns metalbending in zao fu that its usually only 1 in 10 earthbenders that can metalbend. It's like how all humans can do a backflip in theory but most people can't and some people are too out of shape for it so it's not realistic to include metalbending as a part of base earthbending. And if you wanna argue the same thing for lightningbending (even though we see later in the legend of korra that its super common and the fact zuko couldn't do it still was uncommon), firebending is still slightly advantaged over earthbending
To be fair, I'm of the mind that Lightning Bending SHOULDN'T be bendable by anyone that can bend Fire. Lighting is such a dangerous and hard to master Sub-Element that it should moreso be innate aptitude that determines your ability to bend it. I think that was the biggest issue I had with the Elements in Korra. Almost anyone can bend anything of their Element's sub abilities like no tomorrow, save for Lava and Combustion only
@@X_Juice_X Considering that's how Toph figured it out before anyone else... yeah I'm pretty sure some level of knowledge on Seismic Sense had something to do with it 🤔 It helps to be able to sense and visualize the earth within the Metal
It's always bugged me that no one ever talks about how blood bending is only difficult because it's bending the water in a living thing in such a way that you don't accidently violently rip the water out of it... Technically nothing is stopping any water bender from ripping the water from their opponents body in the same way we've seen them do to plants.
@@20somethingcimena "The childrens show on Nickelodeon never talked about ripping the water out of a living creatures body as a means to kill them , their for its not possible. " What then is your belief as to why water in an animal is harder to bend? You clearly have some evidence to support why I'm wrong other than this gory detail not being brought up. why else would you feel the need to comment and call me liar?
@@PietrysCA It's difficult because the writers needed a reason why bloodbending isn't used by every single waterbender. Then we have to work backwards from there and come up with an in-universe explanation. Here's some: 1. Blood isn't pure water. Just as bending vines or mud is unnatural and difficult for most waterbenders, so is blood. 2. It's physically resisted by the person being bent. People aren't just going to let you bend them, they can move on their own. 3. People have spirits, souls. They aren't inanimate objects. They possess qualities beyond that of mere matter. 4. The blood bender is trying not to rip the water out of the target. (I think this is the weakest argument because we've seen plenty of blood benders who didn't seem to mind hurting people.) And for what it's worth, you did make this up and it was never implied in the show. Nobody is calling you a liar. Don't project.
@@ethanrogers9627 @Ethan Rogers 1. Blood is mostly water, and it's never said that bending vines is difficult. It is shown how ever that it's very easy to remove the water from plants. 2. If someone resisted with all their physical might, and a water bender used their bending to its maximum to move the water in their body, the water would either be removed, or they would stop resisting from the pain. 3. Zero evidence to suggest that having a soul makes something resistant to bending. 4. The weakest argument because some water benders like causing pain? That makes no sense. I believe the reason that they don't even touch on the subject is because it is a kids show. They can't exactly have people being violently killed. Calling someone out in the above manner, with a cheap quip and "you made that up" Is literally calling them a liar.
@@PietrysCA All fair points. Fact is, there isn't an in-universe explanation for why it's difficult. We're just speculating. And tbh there doesn't need to be, it's nicer when things just... are. That's partly why AtLA > TLoK. It wouldn't make the show any more compelling if they asked us to believe that blood benders are all kindly not exploding their enemies, it'd just raise more questions. They chose not to explain it at all, and we choose to accept that because it simply FEELS right for the more OP abilities to be more difficult. Also, you're not a liar if you believe it to be true, even if you made it up. He's not literally calling you a liar. You're not being called out. It's not a cheap quip. Nothing is personal. You aren't under attack. You're just having your opinions questioned.
The scenario you gave for why earth bender is the worst was such an extreme example…like when would something like that ever happen naturally….like they would probably agree to be suspend 1000ft in the air in a log cabin for like a fighting match of some sort before the plot itself actually finds a way to have that happen in the story
I mean ya but say in show... all the earth benders on the prison barge? So anywhere at sea is apparently too far from rocks. And if Toph didn't know metal bending she'd have been fucked on the airships. So like its not that uncommon a scenario in show?
@@leemc9943 it still makes no sense cause everywhere you go there is dirt and rocks, with earthbending you will basically always have materials so it makes no sense
@@florg5418 the point of the so called "experiment" is to see which style is the strongest without tools, and talking about the style alone. This is a scientific approach where you will take away everything not necessary for the subjects to live. They can't put them in a vacuum tp remove air because then they will all die, since air is a necessity, no matter what kind of bending you use. dirt is something a person can live without long enough to conduct a fight. Yes, in a normal scenario in a normal place with dirt all around, earthbenders will have an advantage. But we are talking about the style alone, without any tools you can find in your surroundings. Hope that makes sense.
Everyone is impressed with Zaheer's "suck the air out of their lungs" technique when they don't realize that if he did the exact opposite he could pop their lungs effectively instant killing basically anyone before they could do anything. Even Amon would be able to be an Airbender with no morals, can't blood bend if your chest has already exploded... Edit: I'm not saying airbending is better than blood bending, I'm saying that either bender can essentially instant kill if they really wanted to and a fight between the two would not be about who was the better bender but more about who was faster, or saw the other one coming or whatever. About lungs exploding, when giving CPR to children you have to be very careful because they don't have a very big lung capacity and their lungs would pop if you aren't careful. It stands to reason that you could do the same to an adult if you could bend a ton of air into their lungs really really fast. Even if you didn't do it fast enough, overinflating someone's lungs would cause them to puncture, causing air to escape into their chest cavity and causing their lungs to collapse. Even if that doesn't instantly kill you, I highly doubt you'll be in the condition to bend, much less fight back.
@@dinosaurusrex1482 Right but shoving air in is more lethal because popping someone's lungs is an instant kill and Zaheer's choke is more of a theatrical, dramatic, slow, painful death.
I’ve always thought earth bending was the best. Just being able to effectively build whatever you can imagine is awesome outside of fighting. And if real people could bend, earth bending would probably be extremely valued for that very reason. Rome could literally be built in a day with enough earth benders. Then, you add Metal and Lava bending to make it even more diverse and op. Earth for the win, even if air is literally the deadliest style.
Zuko vs fire nation with just his swords : Single Handedly defeats dozens easily. Zuko vs a single Earth Militia Leader: defeated before he could even get in range to swing his sword. Struggles several times throughout the show against Earth Benders. As a bonus, in the first season when it shows Zuko being banished. It was made clear in the war room that the fire nation could not fight earth kingdom armies head on. They used maneuverability and flank war tactics to win. Earth Benders are stronger, without sub bending.
@@CC-iu7sq the thing with Fire is alors that Firefox is a bug source of energy. For a nation, limitless energy is a way more usefull tool than buildings, since well ... we can build things without earth bending
Yeah I think Earth is the best, even if you leave planet Earth and go to another planet, there is still rocks you can bend, as well as meteorites in space. There's no fire, water or air in most of outer space, but you will find Earth a lot.
The most broken and OP aspect of Amon and Yakone's bloodbending wasn't the fact that they could do it all the time, even without a full moon, it was that they could do it psychically, without moving any part of their bodies. All other bending in the series requires physical movement of some sort to activate. Even when Bumi flexed his ability to Earthbend while chained inside an iron coffin, he was moving the muscles of his face. But Amon and Yakone's psychic bloodbending is activated by thought alone. And bloodbending restricts the movements of the opponent. Psychic Bloodbending is thus a straight up hard counter to every other bending style. Normal bloodbending, even if done without the full moon, can be countered by the other bending styles by restricting the bloodbender's movement. Conversely, if any of the other bending styles had the same psychic mutation, they could fight back much more effectively against a psychic bloodbender, as even if their movements are restricted by the bloodbending, they can still counterattack by bending with their minds.
Don’t forget he could also mess with their brain and take away their bending and control multiple people at once which is even more stupidly over powered
Let’s push air bending even higher. Question is air bending just air? Or is it any gaseous substance. If it is any gas, then this gets far too dark for a kid show real quick. An air bender with a gas mask would be the most terrifying thing you could encounter in the Avatar world.
There's a villain in One Piece who has the "Gas" devil fruit which allows him to turn into and manipulate gases so he can do stuff like just create mini vacuums removing oxygen from the air or spawn highly combustable gases on a whim to create explosions.
"The fact that [Airbenders] control the element that people need to breathe... Yeah, that's a pretty big advantage." Fun little theory related to that! So you know how in "The Southern Air Temple," we are greeted to the sight of Monk Gyatso's corpse surrounded by the bodies of Firebenders? While it is highly implied, and the most likely scenario, that the pacifist monk managed to fend them all off before succumbing to his injuries, some fans have theorized that Gyatso *bended all the oxygen out of the room, taking the Firebenders with him.* Even if that wasn't the case, even if Monk Gyatso died due to a fatal blow as opposed to fatal injuries, we are talking about an old friendly monk successfully beating a group of homicidal pyromaniacs who can and will burn everything in their path. Needless to say, yeah, Airbending is OP.
@@Talyfia Oh man I forgot about that, yeah. Dude not only warded off a group of Fire Nation soldiers, he did so when they were in top form and and had their powers maxed out. It wasn't just a 1vMany. It was more akin to a 1 versus entire army of doped up soldiers.
Dont forget the detail that Monk Gyatsu's robe and wooden necklace weren't burnt. This means he only died of exhaustion. His body gave up. The fire benders didn't win they just didn't lose
May I just add that by taking the air out of a particular space, aka creating a vacuum, fire wouldn't work properly. Those firebenders up against Gyatso, they wouldn't be able to harm him with a fireball since its range will be limited to just a few inches from it's source which is their knuckles. Also these air nomads live high up in a mountain. Those are the same type of people who's used to thinner air than on the flatlands. If Gyatso would expand his vacuum space to encompass all that firebender mob with him starting from his position, he would be able to out-breathe them out of sheer lung capacity advantage.
I will say while it’s true Firebenders don’t fare well in cold climates, they do have that fire breathing technique that keeps them warm on the inside so they’re not completely screwed in survival at least.
Yeah but they still absolutely fucked in a fight, and that fire breath really only prolongs their survival until they can find help or shelter, bc if I remember correctly if aang hadn’t just randomly stumbled upon zukos body in the ice he wouldn’t been dead right then and there
its also a theory that the royal family spreaded lies to make normal citizen think they're better that way making a fire bender citezen unable to achieve his full potential as a bender. that would make a fire bender look weaker
@@bleachkid44 Aang didn’t randomly stumble upon him. Zuko got knocked out by Katara right next to him. His breath of fire was completely sufficient in keeping him alive in the arctic tundra if not for literally getting in a fight.
fun fact: Fire has force behind it, just like air, they could just do an upward attack and the metal shards are out of their way, or just a forward attack to make it lose all momentum
@@matijasostojic4288 Fire is powerful enough to make you fly, not as good as air but you can still do it. Just like Azula in prison or General Iroh going from one airplane to another.
I've theorized that air benders could sound bend which would be incredibly deadly. Sound between 30-65 hertz extinguishes fire. Loud sounds can knock you out and even kill. You could also mimic voices for disguise and talk to someone in secret.
an air bender, in theory, should be able to bend the air inside someone and since oxygen (which is in a way air) flows in the entire body, they should effectively be able to mimic blood bending. just a thought tho
@@northernpolaris9895 oxygen isnt air. air is a combination of many different particles. however if the airbender is capable of manipulating each component of air specifically then yeah that would be extremely overpowered and they would undoubtably be able to do what you suggested
Even as a kid I always felt Airbending was just the best. The fact that Aang could take on literally most enemies with just that rather than all 4 elements shows how powerful it is in the face of other benders who were literally hunting him and trying to kill him
Aang was the first airbender that anyone could fight in at least a hundred years, so it's more of a "not knowing how to fight it" rather than "op bending"... But it is kinda op let's be real
@@ManuelRodriguez-dr2cn Yep Aang says it in the first or 2nd episode "I bet you've never fought an airbender. I bet I can take both of you with my hands tied." And he was right. Those two firebenders probably only fought earth benders their whole careers and MAYBE one or two water benders. It was Sozen's comet and total ambush that really knocked out the air nation. With all of that said I'd still prefer to be a firebender. All of the other discipline may have a bunch of overpowered sub-techniques but those are the exceptions not the rule and chances are you won't be born with capabilities to perform them or even encounter them in your entire life. (I don't count Korra because that whole show was a trainwreck lmao)
@@ManuelRodriguez-dr2cn he was also able to dodge very easily too, imagine how hard it would be if your opponent was always jumping high and dodging everything
I definitely agree that blood bending is S tier. I just wanted to add some points I feel like not many people think about because everyone focuses on the combat aspects of blood bending. But just think about how amazing it could be if combined with healing. You can stop someone from bleeding out or find a blood clot you could even potentially find toxins in the blood or do a transfusion. And probably many other things. Like yeah it’s super scary and kinda F-d up in some of its uses I am 1000% sure it could be used to advance medical practices if studied properly.
The show is rather tame with how bloodbending could be used because it's trying to be suitable for kids but I think in a combat scenario the whole "puppet master" aspect is actually the least of your worries. You could do stuff like force blood in the heart to stop moving to cause a heart attack, make the water in someone's eyes burst, cause a stroke by forcing blood to the brain a certain way etc.
@@caldw615 oh yeah for sure. Pinch off one artery and boom they are done. My main point was that people (just like now lol) tend to view blood bending in an almost exclusive combat/violence driven light. Probably because that is also how the show presents it. But if we think about how it could be used non combatively the possibilities are just as endless. If metal benders can tell if people are lying or just near them using seismic sense a blood bender could probably sense their pounding Hearts too. If metal benders can do acupuncture and siphon metallic toxins from the bloodstream think about what a blood bender could do when combined with water benders healing skills. I know they can’t show every possible way bending can be used in a show but it’s just fun to think about.
@@tbgifford Oh yeah like imagine being bitten by a venomous snake and managing to restrict the flow of the venom in your blood and finding a way to force it back out.
I always imagined airbending being extremely OP, like imagine if airbenders learnt telekenisis simply by manipulating the air around an object, they could become earthbenders and if refined enough they could even become water benders with enough concentration. Airbending is supreme
Also good luck coming at them then with Fire bending because in that case of mastery you just lower the pressure of the air in the fire blast, good luck shooting an air bender with fire if they can pull a perfect or near perfect vacuum even just around your hands and feet at that point you could only shoot it out of your mouth and that is a feat only seen done by iroh and ozai in any quantity that could be useful
Strangely, Airbenders bend air in almost the same way that fire benders bend fire, where they can only control the parts in front of their hands unless it's something like a long stream of air/fire or whatever, as opposed to water and earth benders who could control their elements without touching it. So the telekinesis wouldn't work, probably
Not really It’s pretty clear in atla that bending doesn’t work that way It isn’t like mortal kombat level Think about how blood bending cannot be done often, yet full control of water should easily allow it. It’s like a martial art. Also it is clear that the elements associate with the kinds of people. When iroh speaks of the nations he doesn’t say the elements, he says the people of each nation and lists their traits. An Airbender cannot do what you described, it likely goes against their nature at an almost compulsory level. All of this is destroyed in anything outside of atla which destroyed the world building of the series. The amount of garbage korra added, betraying major aspects of the original series was ridiculous.
A skilled blood bender like Yakone, literally with his mind managed to blood bend an entire court room including the Avatar and Toph who is literally the greatest earth bender period. Aang literally had to go into the avatar state to stand a chance. And I heard from somewhere that Kyoshi was so ruthless, she not only learnt blood bending, but learnt how to freeze the blood or even organs like the heart to instantly kill someone.
Kyoshi learns how to freeze internal organs from a healer who freezes organs as a way to stablize patients so they can survive grievous wounds while waiting for help to arrive.
@@Pay_800 Is that not such a Kyoshi thing to do though? Learning something from a healer meant only for life-saving purposes but then using it for life-ending purposes.
@@dancostello4872 from what I know, she used the move only once, and it was out of desperation to not only beat a really strong opponent, but to also finish a fight quickly so she could save someone's life with that very same technique. I say all of this trying to avoid spoilers for the kyoshi novels, which I personally feel are an essential part of the avatar world and should 100% be read by anyone who enjoys the main series.
Wait a sec, if fire benders actually need oxygen for their flames wouldn't air benders be able to remove all the oxygen around the fire bender rendering their bending useless? This kind of falls flat though if fire benders fire doesn't require oxygen.
Not sure, flames are made by constant combustion so I'd say they couldn't. But also draining all the air around someone could maybe take too long so the firebender could react. This is just opinion tough :p
It would consume the oxygen in the air, but that's only 21% of the air around them. Our atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, and I'm assuming the same could be said of that universe since all fire bending is not exploding in the user's face.
What about bone bending? Toph was able to bone bend herself to help with her aging and also when sparing kora she still was able to sense everything she was doing. Maybe the only reason she didn’t control people with it is because the brutality of braking human bones is just gruesome.
The opinion I disliked the most was saying that earth bending was the worst just because of a hypothetical situation where their element is useless such as up in the air, when the reality is that anywhere that humans reside and are going to fight is most likely going to be right on top of earth. Not only that Lava bending was at the top of S tier and who says that earth benders can't make their attacks massive boulders the size of cars if they train enough. They already make massive earth walls, so simply causing them to collapse on enemies or moving/throwing them towards them could be devastating.
He didn’t put the bendings in order, at the end he literally just goes through them all without moving them around which would mean he was saying earth is the strongest, completely neglecting what he said.
Earthbending is pretty useless against an airbending master though, remember what aangs airbending did to that solid stone pillar during his fight against ozai, it crumbled to bits.... Also we established combustion bending or whatever its called is super powerful, aang also controlled the explosion from combustion man with airbending so he could beat combustion bending too. Water bending is probably the only one that can come close to harming an airbender, only cause they can bloodbend on a full moon and pull water from the air around them like hamma did, its also a very flexible element and can change in between different states so maybe they can trap an airbender but an airbender could redirect anything the water bender sends at them including ice. Firebending never stood a chance against airbending, they are strictly offensive and fast but airbenders are evasive and even faster, aang made clowns of zhao, and early season zuko, when he only knew airbending. Then ozai too when he used airbending to explode the fire from the inside out in that one scene. The only bending style that I think can beat an airbender is metal bending but thats also under very special circumstances.
@@shinigamis_like_apples4797 You're just a simp for air bending, aren't you? 1. Aang is an Air bending prodigy. He's also the Avatar so his Air bending is incredibly powerful. Most Air benders aren't going to be that powerful. Not even close. So even though Aang dominates most benders, that doesn't mean that air bending is the best bending style. 2. Your example sucked for why Earth bending is useless sucked. That was when Aang was in the Avatar state, calling upon the combined might of all the Avatars that came before him. You can't use that as an example. In the Avatar state, a fire nation Avatar was able to make multiple volcanoes erupt simultaneously, but no one uses that feat to say that fire bending is the best bending style. 3. Earth bending is not useless. Remember the fight between Bumi and Aang? yeah, Earth bending was pretty handy there. And Bumi didn't even look like he was trying, while Aang was basically going all out. Earth bending can usually block most attacks that an air bending throws at them. the only way an air bender wins is if they're able to maneuver around their opponents defenses and catch them by surprise. A regular air bender isn't out muscling an earth bender. 4. In terms of water bending, air benders really have no way of blocking water attacks. They have to dodge. Its too slippery and versatile to easily block for an air bender since the water bender could just weave their way past any defense an air bender throws their way. They have to dodge, which, while they are quite good at dodging, is a major disadvantage. 5. Again, Aang is an Air bending prodigy. Saying because he smoked Zhao and first season Zuko, air bending is superior isn't fair. Aang is one of the best air benders in his generation, and Zhao and season one Zuko were only above average. that's not a fair fight and it has nothing to do with the bending styles. But, one thing could tip the scales in an air benders favor. See while in the show, when someone air bends, the air always shows up blue. However, we don't know if this is for the benefit of the audience, or if the characters can actually see it in universe. If they can't, it's a huge advantage to the air bender. But I do suspect the characters can see it, given how many times we see Aang's opponents block or dodge his airbending attacks.
@@en4833 Ok let me clarify, I'm not a huge fan of LoK so I didn't see any other showcasing of airbending other than the air bending in ATLA, aka the last airbender prodigy, so excuse me if I have overestimated a normal airbenders abilities. We saw in the temple gyatso annihalted a bunch of firebender soldiers powered during sozins commet, so I thought all airbenders with training are power machines and not easy to beat for any other bender. The examples I gave are shallow yes but they're the only ones that showcase any airbending done in ATLA so if my view is surface level, thank you for bringing it to my attention. Let me try and give more open examples: There was the time he kicked a boulder while flying over fir nation ships and smashed it, this was before he mastered earthbending, he wasn't powered with the avatar state but he was still able to destroy it. Then there's apparently a fight where Tenzin from Lok was beating zaheer and until he got ganged up on by the red lotus consisting of all bending styles, he was still able to hold out for a long time, as exhausted as he was from fighting zaheer. So again, the dodging and evasive manoeuvres are a disadvantage to an extent, but it's also an airbenders biggest strength during combat. Getting far away from your opponent to asses them and their fighting and then attacking from a different angle is a fighting style I really appreciate. Also I do favor airbending over other bending styles so I'm completely biased but that doesn't mean I hate the other bending styles, I really like earthbending. I didn't call it useless in general that would be so stupid, we live on earth, everywhere is made of earth. An earthbender has strong terrain to fight almost everywhere so its foolish to underestimate them, I'm just saying from what I have seen airbenders dont have trouble destroying solid projectiles or dodging so other than grandmasters like Bumi the KING of omashu and aang the avatar, the airbenders would have a higher chance of winning. Also Bumis strength in combat and why he was able to defeat aang was that he was teaching aang to think outside the box and do the unexpected. He doesn't fight like a typical earthbender either, so downplaying one example because they're a master doesn't make any sense.
Thank you Danny, I'm not the only one who thinks lava bending is OP. The first time I saw Bolin lava bend, I was amazed at how cool it looked and thought about all the crazy new possibilities it can have. Also to the people who think lava bending is too slow or what not, it's because it looks like a lava bender is water bending with regular earth bending and it's freaking cool.
dude i realy dont know who are those people that thing lavabending is not op. they can creat a sea of fire and give earth benders one of the fire benders biggest advantages, the heat. its over kill
@@zspider1778 the only thing that I can see weakening lavabending is that they are slower than your average waterbender. But their offense is just so massive, that it's basically Fire, Earth, and Water bending all merged into a single style.
I truly have never been angrier than i am at the eartbending take. "An eartbender can infinitely control the battlefield around them, but only if that battlefield is the material the comprises the entire planet"
I did not mean for this message to be so long when I started, and I apologize in advance for taking up your valuable time: While the likelihood of an earthbender being without earth to bend is very low, I agree, I think the takeaway is supposed to be the fact that there are more theoretical scenarios that put an earthbender out of commission than other benders, especially when some of those scenarios are realistic within the ATLA/LOK universe. For example, an earthbender at the north pole, on a regular boat in the ocean, or on a flying airship (not counting the fairly rare technique of metalbending) whereas firebenders can make their fire anywhere that isn't freezing cold (sans 'breath of fire' training), airbenders are always around air, and waterbenders can pull moisture from living things as well as the atmosphere around them if they're truly in a pinch. As an earthbender, part of your combat technique would be simply avoiding those unfavorable locations to begin with. We see earthbenders making a habit of creating their own homes with their bending, going so far as to carve out entire mountains (Omashu) to surround themselves with earth they can bend, but we've seen in both shows in multiple instances (the prison barge in the ocean that holds Haru's village, the submerged section of the Serpent's Pass, the giant Fire Nation drill for Ba Sing Se, the metal cages designed to contain earthbenders and suspend them in the air, the prison boat for Ghazan) that earthbenders have a significant location weakness that can and has been exploited to defeat them. In their element (haha), earthbenders are horribly powerful, definitively and uniquely matched to take down firebenders in most favorable locations, but the whole premise of ATLA was that firebenders were winning a 100 year world war against earthbenders, meaning that firebenders did everything in their power to make sure that earthbenders weren't within their element when fighting them. All that to say: I totally get your beef: when is an earthbender going to be without earth when we're all stuck to the damn thing like magnets at all times? Well, turns out, when you're fighting earthbenders, you specifically engineer situations that leave earthbenders without earth to bend, so it's a surprising amount. The location weakness of earthbenders is significant enough that it has to be acknowledged in a definitive ranking of each bending's overall ability.
Lmao yeah that part was weird but in his defense while earth benders in general have ability to bend about 90% of the land surface on earth not every earth bender individually can, like sand benders are earth benders but not every earth benders knows how to sand bend so it’s not as vast as you’d think. That being said their element is definitely literally everywhere
Also he isn't basing it entirely on Combat but fire gets 2nd and he also doesn't know how a firebender would beat an earthbender except in a log cabin in the sky
yeah really dumb take when they can bend anything from to paint they don't just bend earth they can bend almost any mineral we're presented with and some have the ability to bend earth they can't see at all
It's worth noting that airbenders can also technically generate storms too, by changing air currents over oceans in order to make typhoons. Kelsang is said to have done it in the first Kyoshi novel.
I pretty much agree with you fully, the only thing I see differently is I think all the earth related bending techniques are a bit stronger than how you presented them. Air is too strong, even in the second episode we see Aang wipe the floor with a whole ship of fire benders, the only person on that boat who could have stopped him was asleep. And yes Aang is a master who beat and ran from basic soldiers and a hot headed teen but they had manpower and Aang is also a child.
To be fair it had been a hundred years since anyone had even SEEN an Airbender and considering their pacifist nature they probably hadn't been involved in any wars or battles before that so it's unlikely anyone had seen them fight. Not to mention the fire nation had gone out of its way to destroy every written mention about the air nomads which left even their own people completely unprepared for this encounter. They were going into this completely blind and it's possible that their own apprehensions about the avatar were what helped Aang defeat them.
@@l.wannabe.l4207 I mean yeah there was definitely a shock factor but I think what the main reason was that Aang is an air bending master and the show really emphasizes on just how large the skill gap is between or normal bender and a master hence why every master we see is a crucial plot point in the story. And since the only other bending master aboard the ship was asleep and likely wouldn’t fight even if he was awake they really never stood much of a chance
Bro he legit wiped the floor with the king of the fire benders at like 13 yrs old. I believe ozai was 23 or 24 feel free to correct me. Aang had like a year total of training while ozai had 20 years , expert teachers, and a fucking comet that boosted his power to the absolute limit. Air bending for the win
@@xanderginn2922 That's not at all a fair comparison though. Ozai was wiping the floor with Aang even though Aang had mastered three elements and become adept at the fourth. Aang only won because he got the avatar state back.
@@matthewcooper4248 sang had water and air mastered. Toph said before the fight that aang still had a ways to go with earthbending and he was still training with zuko in fire. And the avatar state has its limits as well. The whole point is that ozai was supposed to be the pinnacle of fire bending, as you saw even earth and water attacks were useless against him due to the comet. Yes the avatar state played a large role but there was still a massive gap in power and overall resolve.
The reason lightning bending has both a slow and fast charge rate is dependent on how much force you want to output. Like Azula charged hers up and put Zuko out of commission for a while. But when Mako did it on Amon with little charge up time, Amon was back standing at full force in less than 30 seconds. Or atleast its my personal headcannon
One thing he didn't mention related to that is the continuous fire capabilities of lightning bending when charged. When Mako was lightning bending at the spirit vines core thing, he was forming a constant ray of electricity for 30 seconds or so. That changes the comparison he did from "a sniper rifle" to "an exploding rounds minigun".
@@elliscmtk Oh yea that’s another thing, I would assume it also acts like a water gun, The beginning of the lightning is the strongest and the longer you are using it, the weaker it gets. Combat wise, once you miss the the lighting, its better just to do it different time than keep holding it
@@shinozaddy5939 Ehh, I dont think bloodline increases bending strength. Like the only instance I can imagine is Yakones lineage, but its really just an ability than an actual enhancement. Like Zuko can not lightning bend even though he’s part of the royal family
I feel like not all firebenders can lightning bend. Here's my reason 1: Iroh explained only a select few firebenders can separate positive and negative energy to lightning bend 2: If all firebenders were able to separate positive and negative energy to lightning bend, we would've seen a lot more lightning bending when the team invaded the fire nation Extra note: In my opinion, I feel like the longer the charge for lightning bending the more powerful the hit would be. We have seen it doesn't take that long to charge, which probably doesn't make the bending as powerful. the longer the charge the more defenseless it leaves the user, which is why they probably prefer a quick blast, not a longer blast. Same for metal bending/lava bending. Not all earth benders can metal bend and not all earth benders can lava bend I feel like you could only have one or the other as a sub Take Bolin for example He attempted to metal bend but couldn't but we find out later he could lava bend For Ghazan we have seen him earth bend and lava bend never metal bend. I feel like if he could've metal bend, they probably could have escaped with Korra when they first caught her. The same reason as Bolin, he tried failed later in his life finds out he can lava bend For blood bending. We've seen it control people which is correct. For those who watched Korra, we saw Amon/Noatak take blood bending a step further and can actually stop people from bending by blocking their chi with blood bending. He tricked everyone in republic city by making them think he could energy bend to take people bending away which was not the case he was just blocking it. I still liked the video so keep up the good work
Another theory I've come across - during Aang's era, there's an idea that the royal family kept the technique of lightning-bending to themselves. We only ever see royals bending it. Meanwhile in Korra's age, they have power plants where every average-Joe can bend it. The bulk of the theory revolves around the idea that once Zuko took the throne, he actually followed the public mission statement of the war and actually shared their knowledge with everybody - including lightning-bending.
In atla lightning bending was rare, but in Korra we see many many people able to lightning bend, to the point where they have power plants that are powered by lightning benders
I think all this ability s are just tehnik s that need a lot of training and not ewery one are able to do it and that is more human thing than bender like some people can control there emotions to perfection and concrete on 100 things at once which Is some thing you need for a lightning for exemple wile for others no way in hell i belive i would be best at air bending personaly and would suck at fire bending
tho youre right, ATLOK marginalized it , making it a common day to day stuff, and tho i'm with ATLAB I kind of agree with korra here. I have a feel reasons to belive that, the biggest one being royal family BS fire nation propaganda is a thing they're well know for spreading lies, also zuko was going through a crises thats why he couldn't learn it. that way a normal cityzen woudn't have access to a lightning bender teacher they also woud grow thinking they're incapable therefore not even trying similar to boling and his block for metal bending he clearly could do it he just didn't belive in himself enough to try also and bare in mind thats a (me thing) educated guess. dealing with positive and negative energy is exactly how fire benders can ignite air what would make creating lightning pretty much second nature
There's also the remains of Monk Gyatso to prove how powerful Air bending is. Yes they were pacifists but when they find Gyatso's body he is surrounded by so many fire nation soldiers. If he can kill that many fire nation soldiers before they finally managed to kill him... I'd say that's pretty damn powerful for a pacifist.
there is no reason to assume that the firebenders gyatso killed were masters, the series consistently shows that few benders have the potential to be masters of their elements. The avatar gang has been shown to continually to be able to deal with fire nation firebenders with ease and these are fire benders who have actually seen combat unlike the ones who killed Gyatso. All of the fire benders we see during Sozens comet were either Firebender imperial palace guards who are sure to be masters and fire nation royalty like Zuko, Iroh, Azula and Ozai who are sure to have had the best fire bending instructors money could buy. Finally there is Zhong Zhong who was previously a high ranking member of the firenation military who also could have had a proper instructor. I think we the audience overhype the power of Sozins comment since every bender we see use it was incredibly strong before the comet
I agree. Air is the best, always knew that. Not only can you use the air to redirect other elements, air is everywhere and you can even pull it out of peoples bodies. So powerfull
They would need a lot of air. I think it would be better for them to find a way to thin out the dirt in the ground into dust and when the enemy breathes it in. They condense it and crush their lungs. Jeez got dark.
@@desadograisedrobot515 well this is just a theoretical but they can grab the iron from peoples blood and rip them to shreds with it or they can give their opponents brittle bones by ripping calcium out of their bones and just punching them once
@@inquisitorthornside3p494 well there are about 4 grams of blood in an average human adult, so you can make a small bullet, lead it to the brain, and rip apart the brain, and based on them moving huge pieces of metal throughout the series at high speeds, they can definitely do a tiny bullet quickly
The writers definitely intentionally nerf some of the bending. Aang was only able to resist blood bending because of the avatar state. A blood bender is only stopped by another blood bender , the avatar, or plot armor.
@@ndang707 Isn't the avatar able to use all the elements? And even if they where the main four at the start, wouldn't it take only one avatar, for example, with the ability to use healing for the next avatar to be able to learn healing?
@@sir_whocampsalot2876 Yeah, but Aang never used healing, if Korra using healing was a result of her being the avatar, then Aang would be able of using it too. Although metalbending is basically an art of its own, I can't say it is in the same level as healing, healing it's said to be a gift that some have, while metalbending just seems to be very hard to do because of the material and you need certain level of profiency in earthbending. Edit: I searched a little more and got that lavabending was used by Roku and Szeto, both fire nation avatars using a sub-category of earthbending. So it's possible for the avatar to use every element, but for some reason Aang didn't want to learn healing.
As far as I can tell, there is only one "bending" technique that was not mentioned here, and that's Chi blocking. A technique that while not technically a "bending" technique, is still very powerful. If a chi blocker can get a hit on you, then you've already lost movement in at least one of your extremities, and it is learnable by anyone. Definitely A tier or possibly S tier given the right circumstances.
chi blocking is a sticking one as it has the same issues as "energy bending" i.e you have to be up close and even though the "chi blockers" were good, it seems more down to benders underestimating their opponents, allowing them to get that close. My theory on this is only based on the fact that at large bending is range/mid range powers
@@shaddass9993 On top of that, the bender fighting the chi blocker would also need their chi points exposed. Simple leather armor is enough to soften a jab or punch into uselessness. They're only getting through cloth and that is about it. It does have it's place and is useful if applied right, but you also have to be as agile, quick, dexterous as Aang or Tai Li to really even consider it
There is evidence that with enough training, any water bender can blood bend. Taking and his sons are prime examples. Yakone and Amon were also able to blood bend with their minds without a full moon
The "which is it, korra??" when talking about lightning bending is pretty easily explained, I think. You can either shoot out a quick shot of lightning whenever; still hurts. Or, you take time to charge it up and make it more lethal/deadlier. That's how I saw it, at least.
That doesn’t seem consistent either, Mako kills someone by just throwing a hand out and just firing a bolt. A bolt that took 3 movements incapacitated an Amon activist. Like 5 firebenders can power the city grid by just shooting at shit without any windup.
@@phoebusapollo8365 If you're talking about Mako killing Ming-Hua, she died because he electrocuted the water. The water helped make the current stronger or however the science behind htat works lol I don't know which bolt you're referring to in the second sentence, my bad. And I doubt it's only those 5 benders powering the whole city lol
@@TechnoPup water conducts electricity, it doesn’t make it stronger. The second bolt was during a car chase with the Amon Activists. “No prep just throw the bolt” to kill Ming-Hua, and multiple movements to incapacitate another person. And even if there were more than 5 benders powering the city’s it makes no sense for them to use weaker lightning when it would be so much more efficient to have less people putting more power into the city’s grid. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that it makes no sense for lighting generation to be that quick. It’s not just firebending where you harness breath and chi to just make fire come out, there’s a whole inner ritual of separating positive and negative energies, and I’m sorry, just throwing your hand out and shooting a lightning bolt like regular firebending is not enough for you to separate the energies. Even Ozai, arguably the most proficient and powerful firebender in the show moves both his arms in a circle before firing it.
The circumstances you gave for the 4 main styles is... oddly specific. yeah, in the middle of the air the earth bender has a disadvantage. you might find it odd that humans live mostly ON THE GROUND. They are literally NEVER without material access unless they're in the arctic.
there ARE several instances in the show where earthbenders are left withought earth to bend, purposley. in world, scenarios and precautions have been engineered to take away someones ability to earthbend/fight back/escape imprisonment. before metalbending, at least. and it took heavy evolution in world for many earthbenders to be able to commonly metal bend, and even THEN, they could only bend metal with impurities, last i checked. someone will have to fact check me on that, i havent watched much the legend of korra.
@@Ashgrey0 yes but we're talking about them being on a plane or blimp specifically since the original comment was how they would "never be without material access"
I think this intro is the best I've ever heard. With comments like "you're not going to find that level of maturity on this show", "nah nah nah, we're going like 4th-year playground rules, someone has always has to be able to kick somebody else's ass", and lastly "what's the point of having a well-detailed magic system if you can't debate which 12 year old will win a fight". I also love the comment at the end "this video is going to piss you off, but wouldn't you rather be pissed off than bored" This video is a masterpiece, keep up the good work.
Id imagine lightning bending gets stronger the longer it takes since people have launched it easily and fast but i imagine more power the more you buildup
I think it also depends on their mastery of it as the lightning Ozai shot at Zuko was extremely large and seemed extremely powerful, you could feel the impact when it hit Zuko( even though he redirected it) and he charged it up in like, around 1 second from what I remeber
It's the same way that we are breathing Air, that means airbender could fill up lungs and then Pooh they Explode. And also waterbender, our body is basically filled with water, imagine if you freze it inside the body and then boom, you exploded before you could even blink.
Technically... no. Toph explains in the TLA what she does to 'bend' the metal. What everyone sees as 'metal bending' is just a focused bending of the impurities that are in the metal (which are tiny bits of earth). So she makes pressure using these impurities to 'bend' the metal. It's similar to the illusion of the 'earth bending' that makes Aang using air bending to elevate a boulder in one episode or when he plays with 3 little stones in his hands; he just bend the air around to move the rocks but didn´t use earth bending at those points.
It's actually theorized that Toph used bonebending to move Sokka out of the way a few times, because the ground beneath him wasn't animated to move in those situations. And if I remember correctly there actually was a bonebender, who managed to grow bone spikes out of his body and stuff like that in a comic. At least I've seen a yt video about that
I'd love to see an R-rated Avatar series, but with a few caveats as to not make everyone just one-hit each other. Full freedom to do the most brutal things like taking the air out of lungs, blood/bone bending etc. However, my caveats would be that the characters could, through hardship, protect their bodies, but only the volume of their own from any bending. Call it inner chi or whatever. So a master whatever-bender could just demolish NPCs, but would have to properly battle those who have mastered their respective bending styles. My hope for the series would be to eliminate any questions of ''Why didn't they just...?* But then go all out The Boys(Amazon series) on the whole concept.
Tbf P'li is also confirmed to be able to use standard Fire Bending, and she's pretty sick with it given that she avoided getting roasted by Zuko's DRAGON. So it's not like it's incompatible with standard Fire Bending for defense or close quarters. (Not that Fire is the best for either of those, that's Earth and Air respectively. But it's still a thing).
I mean yeah but he was just talking about the sub bending by itself without the actual fire bending the same way he said he’d rank flight at S tier when combined with air bending
@@bleachkid44 ik, but in specific regards to Combustion Bending that wasn't mentioned. With every other sub bending, he at least made mention of how it synergizes with the main style, but due to CB's usage in both Aang and Korra, we rarely see that synergy applied.
@@furiousbunerstone8538 yeah during her initial breakout. It's when she says "I've waited fifteen years to feel this warm" and then tried to murder said dragon.
It also doesn't seem like they can make fire anymore. We only ever see both p'li and combustion man manipulate fire shot at them in order to dissipate it. I think instead of being able to bend fire out of the arms, legs, and mouth they focus all of those into their forehead opening the corresponding chakra and all of their firepower from the 5 main places fire leaves the body is combined into that one spot resulting in a powerful concussive blast
Spirit Projection is nearly unstoppable scrying, it's the perfect way to scout on your enemy without any downsides aside from possibly being vulnerable to someone finding your material form, at which point you should've found a better place to hide or had competent allies.
I am like 99% sure the actual characters in the show can't see the airbending the way we do. Because in that one episode with Haru in season 1 Katara pretends to earthbend by having Aang blow air at a boulder to make it look like she's bending it. So they can't see the air otherwise they wouldn't have been fooled.
the air cannon Aang created in an episode where he did NOT have earthbending yet would suggest otherwise tho, bc Sokka and Katara could ¨see¨ where to put the rocks so they would be shot out. i agree with you, just dont see why they would give us 2 examples
Personally I favor Earth bending over fire bending, it's the least flexible of the 4, and Earth bending has far superior subforms. Sure fire bending good at killing someone but so is a pebble through the skull, and that's faster than a flaming punch
I agree with almost everything, except for two things: 1. Lightning bending is not slow at all. In The Last Airbender, lightning bending was only at its infancy, which is why it took so long for Iroh and Azula to charge it. Like Iroh said, it takes a very clear mind to control it, so I’d assume they took a longer time to generate the lightning step by step, to maintain that control and not lose their lives in the process. But even then we see Ozai generate lightning in about a second and with barely any movement, just one big swing really. Additionally, we also see Azula going insane during the episode of the Last Agni Kai, and despite not having a clear mind at all, she can still generate it, albeit less precise. It just goes to show that lightning was more than just an incredibly rare and almost-impossible skill, with enough training and discoveries you can generate it much easier. And overtime, that’s exactly what happens. Like we see in The Legend of Korra, lightning bending has been developed highly so that anyone can generate it really quickly. Just look how Mako generated lightning in a split second with barely any movement, while being bloodbent by Amon out of all people. iirc in the comics (but correct me if I’m wrong here), lightning also ended up having more uses than just lightning bolts too, making it even more OP. It’s arguably borderline S-tier, but the only thing holding it back to A imo is the suicide potential. However, I’d say that especially after the high development it went through, this is a way smaller problem in comparison to combustion bending. I’d say a high A ranking is still fair though, so I don’t disagree with your placement, only a bit of the reasoning. 2. Earthbending is less prone to the environment problem than waterbending. Unless you’re surrounded by one of the arctics, a big water body (ocean/sea/lake) or a river, how much can you use it honestly? Yes you can carry a water bag but such a low amount of water holds back a waterbender a lot imo, it’s just relatively small water swings. Most waterbenders also don’t know that you can get water out of plants (or even thin air) in the first place, as even a waterbending master like Katara didn’t know until Hama told her. Earth on the other hand is far more prevalent for humans, as we stand and live on the ground. The planet is only 30% land but that’s where 95% of the action happens. The fight between Korra and Tarrlok in season one shows this the most imo. He was an incredible water bender and could battle Korra really well, because behind him he had a fountain with a lot of water. But once that was gone? He was totally fucked and powerless, and the only reason he got away was because he resorted to non-full moon bloodbending, which we all know is the most OP thing a non-Avatar can do. I’d still say earthbending is the “weakest” of the four though, mostly because I believe that in a longer fight, it is easily the most exhausting element to bend. Imo this is also the reason why the Earth Kingdom could not defend themselves against the Fire Nation during the war, and warfare as we know is usually a long process. Utility wise it’s definitely the best, so that’s what balances it really well for me. It’s the most versatile element on paper.
ik im a whole year late but the earth nation struggling to defend themselves was less about there bending and more about the corruption in ba sing sei and the fact that firebenders had more advanced technology and since it was made of metal the earth benders couldnt bend it
Agreed except earth bending is broken it's nerfed because the show is PG in a real fight one git from a rock would cave in skulls crack bones and shred flesh only a very skilled air bender could survive. Also anyone with a strong tactical mind can steamroll most enemies with earth bending if you can seismic sense you can go underground in a littlw cave and a few air holes surronf yourself with walls and earth bend the.whoel fight from there or pop out of the ground anywhere to attack this alone counters a blood bender if they can tell where under the ground you are but you can see them clearly and if you are deep enough not even a combustion bender is digging you out. Earth bending is easily the best followed by air.
I actually think waterbending, even by itself, is the most powerful. Have you SEEN what water at a high enough pressure can do? Water in nature is pretty relentless with time. If a waterbender can control that "time" (aka increase pressure) then it's pretty hard to stop.
Have you ever seen what air can do? Do you remember how the water gets that fast? Pressure. Airbenders could easily bend all four elements, simply by manipulating the air around them, and they could do it better than the actual benders if masters. Imagine an Airbender using air to grab a ball of water, squeeze it with the air and just use the pressure cutter anyway.
People forget that it’s a kids show. When it’s not being used on people water cuts steel and evicerates rock. Hama shreds a massive boulder into 4 slices in a second
Yeah, though I think Water alone is outclassed by Air. Water bender starts to bend the water and then is immediately stopped as the air is sucked out of their lungs. Alternatively, bending the air within someone and instantly exploding the lungs/organs within would also suck... Not to mention, Air can also be pressurized to easily go through people. IMO, Air outclasses Water until you bring in Blood Bending.
@@olorin6494 People don't forget, people are simply speculating and talking about the TRUE lethal ramifications of the bending if it *wasn't* a kid's show.
16:11 "if you put all four benders in this highly specific situation designed to screw of earth then its the worst" when i could say put all four in a bunker deep underground made of stone then its the best
Flameo hotman! Okay, with that out of the way - I wholeheartedly agree with this ranking. My only issue comes not from you, but from the mechanics. Water/Ice and Lava/Earth is just phase-shifting liquid to solid and back again; I've always had a problem with the idea that waterbenders can phase-shift almost at will while lavabending is so damn rare that we only know two people that can do it. I know it's because the creators knew it was OP, but that always irked me a bit.
Probably related to the sheer amount of energy it takes to phase shift rock, as compared to water. And the fact that in freezing water to ice you're removing energy, while in melting rock you're supplying energy. I headcanon that to use lavabending you need Big Stonkin Reserves of energy, more so than a water bender needs to be an ice bender.
Ive always thought precisely the same. You notice we never see water benders turn water to steam? They probably pull energy from water to freeze it then return that same energy back to it
Water is more connected with change and the flowing, earth bending is known as the solid, sturdy one. Just by nature it makes sense that water benders could shift it easier than earth benders cus its kinda their thing.
I'd argue that bending has a lot to do with mentality and attitude as seen with the avatars. Aang was flighty and non-confrontational so struggled with earth bending while Korra was aggressive and struggled with air. I think it'd be difficult for an earth bender whose discipline required steadiness and solidity to think in the fluid mindset that phase shifting would probably require.
@@michaelu3055 that's what I was thinking also, how many Earthbenders are agile and flighty. Also i think it has to do with being able to imagine doing it. Toph had to train Aang into imagining himself as a rock to understand earthbending. How often do you think people see lava and such, while people constantly see ice turn into water and vice versa. And really the only people that see Lava are firebenders and like us the people of the world probably thought it was a subclass of fire, so earthbenders never really tried.
Ming Hua could defeat a bloodbender. I noticed that she is one of the few who can move water without using bending forms. So if she was ever being blood bended, she can slice through whoever was doing it without moving. Her arms move independent of her body, so she can move water when she herself can't move. Above that she is a VERY aggressive water bender, she will slice clean through people in an instant. I always loved how high velocity her style was.
@@andrewbaek6691 Nope, when she carries P'Li out of her prison her arms move independently while her body does normal climbing. When she climbs herself out of prison her arms move while her body is motionless. When she stands and does nothing her arms are still being controlled and maintained. She can move her water arms completely independent of her body. We have seen her use her arms while her body is busy and when her body is completely still.
I love the vid man, and thanks for making it! Though if you'd like to read, my list is a little different: it would be like Airbending, Earthbending, Waterbending, Firebending if you're talking who beats who in a 1v1 or free-for-all fight like the cabin example. -Airbending is hands down the strongest 1v1 fight element, just choke em out and outrun their newfound life timer (which you have the best movement options of all time so that's a free win). Oh also, air is invisible - otherwise The Boulder and Xin Fu would've known Aang airbended instead of thinking Toph took a dive for the prize money, making it even more dangerous as the enemy would lose half of whatever time they had just realizing you were doing this. And this strategy doesn't take into account wind temperature, debris, wind speed, tornadoes, aerial juggling (launching you into the air and air-punching you until they get bored) any of the other actual offensive or evasive capabilities of Airbending, so... -Earthbending only takes one or two well-placed sharp pebbles to kill someone with (think of a bullet) and anything more just gives you the defensive power of god, on top of having the utility of being able to build almost anything you want out of stone in an instant. Oh also, because you can levitate the earth, you could theoretically do this while you're standing on it soooooo flight boots! :D (see Book One Episode 6, Imprisoned - if an Earthbender can make a coal platform float with people on it, they could theoretically float on it too) -Waterbending takes a more supportive role despite its bullet-like offensive capabilities (the rain scene from book 3), but the support it offers ranges from bootleg earthbender to "frick you I am you I control you" to "instant field medic, just add water". Not great at any particular thing, but being decent at everything with a free healing ability is really nice in every situation, even if the healing isn't bringing you back from the dead without Spirit Water. Sadly, they don't have a suffocation trick like Airbenders, because water is visible and can be stopped by every element (Fire via steam, Earth via wall, Water via freeze, and Air via blowing it all away on sight) -Firebenders are the strongest crowd controllers of the bunch with good area damage, flight jets, and a free one-shot button on key targets provided they're distracted (lightning), as well as the theoretical ability to cauterize wounds if you were careful, but everyone has some cheesy way they could give themselves flight and everyone else has better one-on-one damage for a negligible resource requirement, that's why you never see a lone firebender succeed in the show that isn't close to royalty, cause only they are adept enough to get away with it - whereas you can see Toph, Katara, Bolin, Korra, Amon, Tenzin, The Boulder, Bumi, and insert any other side benders hold their own when caught ON their own... if they aren't firebenders. If armies of these people fought, however, Firebenders would come out on top since the choke trick isn't possible on that large of a scale, bullets only deal with one or two targets at a time, and all of those tricks pale in comparison to fifteen huge flame jets that take all of them out at once... hence the whole point of the show. Airbending would be SS, Earthbending falls between S and A depending on which extra flavor of bending you have (Lavabending being best of course), Waterbending is A, Firebending is B. On a seperate tier list of course, cause you can't compare the whole bending style to its smaller subcategories.
Also the "Slow lightning" Thing isnt really relevant, it actually just means these characters are faster than, or relevant too-the lightning's speed itself. Its not an anti-feat, but instead an actual feat of speed. It means the characters are fast, not that the lightning is slow. Power scaling 101
Nah, if the characters could move as fast as lightning then there would be no point to the show at all. The lightning being slower makes more sense however I think the show just makes it slow for entertainment
@@Clackerus The point to the show would remain intact. A speed feat dosent change this. Especially one from later in the shows course. There's also different levels of speed feels. Just because a character can briefly brush relativisitically to lightning dosent mean they can maintain it.
Plus Gyatso nukes an entire room of firebenders. He probably did that almost instantly, since the firebenders would have used their comet powers to blow him to smithereens. If this is the amount of power airbending can have, just killing someone instantly, then it's scary. Edit: Actually I just realized we don't know what Gyatso did to kill all those firebenders. But he definitely killed them all quickly, taking himself out also, so this must be a pretty powerful element
if u have to guess, he sucked out all the air, instantly killing all ppl in range but him, and also taking the oxygen away so the fire would not get to him
Even more gruesome possibility Since Air/the atmosphere exerts pressure on our bodies, and lack of that pressure would cause our bodies to swell and hemorrhage right away, Gyatso could have bent all the air out of the room just long enough to cause a low pressure zone that killed all the firebenders, and himself, with grievous internal injuries from the swelling
All fire benders can lightning bend. . .I mean if redirection of lightning counts but Zuko proved that finding lightning when you want it isn’t very convenient. For earth benders 9/10 times your on earth and there’s a lot of it. For water benders sure you can take water from the air or your sweat but there won’t be about of it. I feel like waterhenders struggle a lot more than earthbenders in finding bending material
But look at how many people can lightning bend in Korra, it’s at the point where they have power plants solely powered by lightning benders. It’s either because the technique was new in aangs time or the technique was hidden from the public and only used by the nobles. But in between aangs time and Korea’s lightning bending had become commonplace.
@@shawnf5260ahhhh, I mean that makes sense. I just happen to be one of those avatar fans who pretends Korra doesn’t exist. I really tried to watch it but I never got into it so my knowledge of Korra stuff isn’t deep at all.
With regards to lightning bending’s inconsistent tai chi charge time, I think that’s them increasing it’s potency, longer wind up equals higher voltage. Mako didn’t need the wind up since he was using the water as a conductor
i just wanna see an avatar that’s a master at not only the 4 elements but also all the sub elements. like imagine an avatar shooting off lightning bolts faster than Ozai, blood bending so smoothly it looks like the person being controlled is in charge, shaping metal into weapons and armor, making their own volcanoes wherever they want, and flying while doing all this.
Love the take, but I feel like airbending has a hinderance of the need for a spiritual connection. The monks lived the way they did partially because it helped them fuel the spiritual connection needed to effectively use their element. Even Zaheer lived "sage-like" once becoming a bender. I don't feel like any regular joe could effectively get powerful as an airbender without some sort of lifestyle change.
but thats due to the teachings of the monks all the way back to the lion turtle city days where the airbenders lived in harmony with the spirits around them. sure it probably helped them with thier bending prowess, but its more akin to focusing. i mean they are literally taking hold of the air around them and converting it in some form to move things, probably in a way so it wont just rip them apart or completely remove the air from an area so they and everyone else dont die instantly. the amount of focus airbenders would need to be able to not just one shot themself and everyone around is insane. then past just having to focus real damn hard as not kill, we see in korra when airbending comes back people are just willy nilly doing it, like its second nature. boomy saved himself falling, the korra gang literally just followed rumors of airbenders from around the world to collect them all as to build a single body air group. tenzen probably knows the danger they could potentionally bring if unproperly trained, unlike water or earth where its like tremors of bending, its akin to fire to where its raw power from within when unleashed and when untrained, deadly as we see aang burn katara. or if its airbending being unleashed, 100 mile winds ripping your flesh from your bones, imagine the sound barrier breaks in front of your face? thats deadly. the pacifist teachings makes sense as to keep a calm mind and morally good compass as to not become gods among men flying around blasting things apart. sucking the air out of people who cross you. no you want the most deadly bending to be controlled by the calmest, nicest people possible. but fire bending killed literally as many as they could and only 1 family in the whole world is around with generational airbending in them. 1. every single other airbender now might, might follow the good teachings of pasifism, but a majority are gonna be unhappy, war surviving people who have it within themselves to kill, and now the have the greatest bending element around. only way any other bender can win is to not let them train, as we see with zahir, it only takes no worldly connections to fucking fly, and all those beaten down orphans will have nothing left but revenge. air is top tier, especially if you kill gyatso
For how seismic sense detects elements other than Earth, the answer is simple. It works be feeling vibrations, and basically echolocating-- anything that makes a sound, or moves in a location where the ground can absorb those vibrations will show up on her radar. The more trained, the better the noticing gets, but it’s also why she couldn’t sense anything on sand.
The lighting bending depends on how fast it is and where it's coming from. Redirecting sky lighting maintains the same speed. They take long to charge so they can gather energy. All current is pretty fast like those EM currents in videos.
Fire is the weakest overall IMO, even though it's ironically the most rooted. Other than concentrated destructive bursts, Fire is overall outclassed in multiple ways by everything else. Earth Support - Better at supporting allies. Has the ability to combine strength to make walls become more sturdier, to bend larger, use their metal to catch people, use their metal to control their own mid air movement easier, can give an ally armor, the ability to forcefully move stationary weaponry via bending the ground beneath them, move enemies via metal/earth, and can move allies out of danger forcefully. Defense - This is an obvious one for Earth as there is rock/metal armor, the ability to create walls, has overall more ranged and can move underground via making tunnels with bending. Destructive capabilities - Overall, Fire wins UNTIL you bring in lavabending. Gazan quite literally took out an entire mountain on his own and practically turned it into a volcano. He also took down the Earth Kingdom's wall like nothing, something an entire army of the Fire Nation failed to do on their own. Fire will also struggle against anything fire resistant whilst Lava will either easily melt through it or sink the structure as the ground beneath will melt eventually away. And to bring it back to literally creating a Volcano, imagine a city being underneath... That city is the next Pompeii. Also, I'm terms of survivability, you can survive fire and even lighting, but you're done for if lava just splashes on you let alone if you get full on hit by it. I will say, Fire is better when it comes to concentrative destruction via Lightning and Combustion. Utility - Fire has more personal utility if we're talking as if there's literally nothing nearby, but with technology and metal, Earth EASILY destroys this category. Robots, controllable metal armor, can control their movements far easier via metal, entire cities made of metal fo easily protect, seismic sense, etc. Also, it's arguable, but Toph may have been doing an unique spiritual Earth bending technique like Jinora's astral projection (she calls it a high level air bending move and literally imbues the air with her spiritual energy) when she connected to the spirit vines and probably utilized seismic sense, allowing her to literally "see" the entire world. Fire however does have a leg up on everything else in the fact that it doesn't have to rely on an established source of the element as they can simply create it, with the exception of Air as air is literally everywhere on the planet. Dueling - Earth, particularly Metal, is probably the best when it comes to purely dueling, with the exception of Blood for obvious reasons. Kuvira shows this perfectly in how she utilizing her outfit to duel. Other than having unlimited resources, metal outclasses Fire, Lightning, and Combustion in a pure 1v1 environment IMO. Not to mention the pure speed someone can metal bend, far easier precision, metal armor, capable in literally every range, the ability to tell what people are going to do via detecting their movements via seismic sense (and hypothetically through the same technique that allows for lie detection), and to have an enemy's location at all times via seismic sense in the event the the environment obscures a lot. Lava also has an super fast instant kill move via Gazan's lava shuriken. Healing - Fire wins as the only thing we see for healing is Toph being able to detect and remove metallic Poison. (Ill do the others later, but I think Fire/Lightning/Combustion is just *overall* outclassed IMO.)
I agree that fire is outclassed in certain circumstances, such as defense and support, however fire bending could outclass any other bending type offensively, besides blood of course. You could devise a strategy to beat any other bender using fire/ lightning. You could probably do so with other bending types as well, but none of the strategies could be as quick or precise. All other bending types are telegraphed, besides air, which would be the bending type fire would struggle with the most in my opinion, but would eventually outclass.
@@tyleradams5156 Even that I don't agree. Every class has a counter offensively to Fire. Air straight blocks Fire and you can just suffocate someone before they can pull off the very long casting time that is lightning or better yet dodge it with air, since lightning is rather slow in the show (or people are weirdly fast), and Combustion bending can be stopped with a slap of air to the face or putting an air bubble around their head. Earth straight up blocks Fire, Metal is totally immune to fire as long they metal vender literally just sits still as their metal would just fly through the fire, lava can also create walls as well as hurl instantkill rock at people like Gazan does, and Lightning does counter Lava but the speed at which you can bend metal is insane as well as Earth benders can take advantage of the long cast time to make someone immobile while they do it (even if the terrain is very earthy, metal would be everywhere in a modern society). Combustion is the best bet, but we've seen what metal can do to an Combustion bender (and also a literal pebble). Water has Bloodbending, that's literally just instant win. Water alone would probably lose to Fire unless the terrain has a LOT of Water but Water would definitely be able to counter Lightning. Combustion is also rather could depending on the terrain, but given enough water, you would probably be able to keep blocking shots with your ice and then send hundreds of ice darts at them though I think Combustion overall wins here. So yeah, I think Fire is just outclassed when you factor everything it had to everything every other element has. Even when you go by specific sub classes, each class can counter most of what Fire can do but not vice versa. Fire is best up against novices, but I feel a competent master of any of the other elements would be able to outdo it other than Water *overall* until you bring in Blood. Fire is the most visually stunning, but without Sozen's comet, the Air Nomad's peaceful attitude, the Earth Kingdom's solitude, and the Water Bender's lack of military might, I don't think Fire Nation would have ever successfully taken over the world without all these conditions (Hell, they couldn't even take the Earth Kingdom for a hot minute. I also think the writers may have realized that and that's why Sozen's comet was created in the first place; to bring back balance. Same way I think Water Benders have the Full Moon, because their lack of resources and their bending being finite can be easily exploited).
I feel compelled to point out that firebenders can fly as well, since Jet-stepping seems to be the only Flying Opera Company Skill to have survived since Kyoshi and is the only one that is still taught
Well, i would call it flying, more like boosting upwards, as its more of a propulsion than straight up flying like air bending, it can give firebenders boosts up but not sustainable flight, more like a jet pack than flight.
I do have to respectfully disagree the use of a jetpack is a form of flight, it just isn't as elegant a method as Airbender, it's more like flight through brute force: same action, different method
You need to include the personality traits attached to each element into your considerations. This is a huge part of their bindings. If you take into account the fact that fire benders are all about their passion and their desires, then you will see they are the ones most likely to do anything to win a fight if it's something they want to do. This also makes air bending a lot weaker, as air benders are often pacifism. Ergo, fire is the most powerful. (Its literally been called the element of power, as well!)
Pacifist? You mean like Zaheer murdering people? Bending has little to do with personality traits. It's the associated culture that promote some personality traits over other.
No, that is where you’re wrong. Being a pacifist doesn’t make you weaker, it just means you’re not likely to kill someone. 😂😂 Airbenders are the strongest element in the show, period. Why? Well they’re all spiritual. It’s been confirmed spiritually increases your ability to bend and be good at bending. Meaning airbenders are the strongest benders because of their strong spiritual connection, hence why all airbenders are benders.
The problem with tier lists, is that most ppl rank them only on or primarily on combat effectiveness. Bending is versatile, it’s more than just combat. -healing, energy and Spirit walking bending are S. You can heal an entire platoon of mostly anything- illness to wounds. With energy bending you can block one’s bending, you don’t even have to do the fighting ppl can do that for you. Spirit walking is more of an intel bending. With that you can gather information from the physical and spiritual world of your enemies. And also possess them if you are highly skilled in it.
Support for the Airbending: Monk Gyatso went out fighting and took a whole troop of firebenders with him, pacifism without power isn't pacifism, etc etc
You convinced me with all of your rankings and I was pretty impressed. Until your earth bending take… No way earth bending is worse then water bending, what is a water bending going to do when a giant boulder is flying at their face.
well, we can see in the episode where Hama teaches Katara, that she takes the water from the flowers around her and cuts a rock with it. Also in the episode where Azula tries to break into Ba Sing Se Aang and Katara cut the metal inside with water bending.
@@artistemma9582 in the human body there is roughly 4 grams of iron and in a 9 millimeter bullet there is about twice as many grams of mass, so that means that you can essentially make a small bullet that can rip through the human body within seconds, you can puncture the heart several times and shoot the iron into the brain causing fatal brain injuries, and as a plus you can do the same with the calcium in their bones
Loved the tier list. I'd like to think some water benders can just train their lungs and use a full sphere around them as protection. It would slow down everything and you can attack however you want.
In my opinion this is how the main four are ranked If they have no sub-bending: 1st: air 2nd: fire 3rd: earth 4th water If the person has all sub-bending unlocked: 1st: still air 2nd: earth 3rd: water but its close to 2nd 4th: fire
Fun Fact we have seen Lava bending 3 times in ATLA. Bended once by a fire bender and the other 2 were avatars who's base element was fire. It was only in Korra that Lava bending became an earth bending ability, probably because they didn't actually have any sub bending style. (Air benders have spirit projection. Fire benders have Lightning and Combustion. and water benders have Ice bending and healing.) Metal bending isn't really a sub bending style its just earth bending in a specific way. Same with Sand, Mud, Swamp, and Blood Bending. What I like to define as a sub bending style is a form of bending that does not bend one of the four elements in any way.
basic circular chart of overlap would look like this: earth --> lava --> fire --> heat/combustion/plasma?? --> air --> steam/clouds --> water --> mud/wet clay/muddy water--> earth and I don't think this is that controversial It's weird that some benders can make their element solid, liquid, and gas while others can't. I'd argue that all probably could, even if it hasn't happened in either show. If they can change the molecular vibrational speed of elements at a whim then why couldn't air or fire benders be able to control the vibration of molecules (i.e Helium and Hydrogen in the air) so fast that they break apart from their bonds.
@@nickrise6958 you gotta remember that avatar doesnt account for science in any way when it comes to bending. It's less about atomic structure and more about symbolism and spirituality(or at least it tries to be. Korra started to get stuff wrong when they didnt rehire the head writer of ATLA while making Korra) That's why water heals(a common superstition is about the healing properties of water/tea), fire bending can learn lightning bending(when lightning hits the earth it can create fires and therefore gets linked to it) etc etc. It's the same reason why earth benders cant bend the carbon in people's flesh. And why firebenders cant create thermonuclear explosions etc
@@Lordgrayson While I agree with your take, you also have to remember that the show only takes you as far as the industrial revolution and even then its not about scientific advancement its based completely on bending power and what that allows them to do technology-wise. It's easy to imagine an in-world inventor/scientist looking into states of matter and bending in the interest of trying to create benders out of nonbenders. Even if everything is spiritual and symbolic, elements would still likely be made up of atoms and molecules meaning that a scientific understanding of how their bending works (which there likely would be a scientific explanation in world on top of the magic element) would allow earth benders to realize their ability to bend the "earth" in humans (humans, humus, earth btw). Or for fire/air benders to superheat matter in the air. I do disagree with the sentiment that just because we don't know if the magic system is or isn't grounded in science, doesn't mean we can't talk about the ramifications of if it is.
@@nickrise6958 Im not saying this is a lack of information, we know that the way the elements are bended is not based on scientific information. The elements are bent as they are. Fire isnt heat its forms of fire. water isnt liquid its forms of water. earthbending isnt bending some combination of periodic elements, its bending the earth/rock. and airbending isnt bending oxygen and nitrogen, its bending air. The argument for bending the elements in ways like flesh bending or airbenders making nitrogen bombs fails to take into account the fact that they arent bending atoms. Otherwise how in the world would you explain energy bending which is the most spiritual and symbolic form of bending there is(until Legend of Korra came around and retconned it out of existence)
Excuse me... when do we see a firebender bend Lava? Also, in ATLA we also see Kyoshi, base element Earth, do it when she creates the island. Then we see Szeto and Roku doing it. I'm missing the firebender doing it though.
Cool list and I mostly agree! One thing i always imagined which may not be true is that lava bending was a result of parents being a fire bender and an earth bender just like Bolin's parents were (As well as being super rare). And that it only came to light in Korra after nations were more unified and mixed nation relationships were more common rather than it just being a super rare earthbending technique. Also with the final tier list I still think water is most powerful. They theoretically could just freeze someones blood without the need of bloodbending or having to carry around water.
My favourite bending is fire, most offensive capabilities, ability to warm yourself whether you are in artic or cold cooler in a prison. Lightning redirection, ability to do spinning kicks inspired by Airbenders, katara water push, up and down on zuko with fire. Dragon breath by drinking tea. Creating lightning. Creating fire tentacles, shooting fire that looks like a dragon, melting metal with fire, conquering other nations, discovering industrialising their nation, going to see ember island plays, having the ability to summon sparky sparky boom man, having a chance in being sparky sparky boom man, having the ability to kill or tame dragons, having the ability to fight other firebenders with agni kai. Burn a kids face and sacre him for the rest of his life and watch him have a redemption arc and redirecting lightning shot by you and then going to help the avatar and have a duel with his extremely talented sister also watch him bond with his uncle who is the best uncle in all if fiction. Also see him arrest his uncle and see hsi uncle get himself rip and then they meet again and hug and cry
Alright, I agree with a lot of this... in the context of a 1v1/4v4 free for all. However, thinking in a larger scale, like a war for example, the rankings are really off tbh. Healing and astral projection in a war would be absolutely bonkers. Like, if a single air nomad had astral projection it would allow them to know the imminent plans of attack that Sozin would've been doing during the comet and given the air nomads days to plan an escape. Healing is absolutely nuts in terms of large scale combat. If someone takes an arrow to the knee, they're done adventuring right then and there. But with healing being able to at the very minimum rapidly decrease the time it takes to heal from a wound, a once useless soldier goes right back to peak performance in a day at a maximum. Like, the water tribes could rebound right back from 10 viable warriors to 1000 in a matter of days with healing. The only thing I DO NOT agree with is the following; Swamp benders can bend plants as is shown in the show, and while that may seem very niche on the surface, wait until you hear about poisonous plants, or just thorny plants in general. Like, getting hit with a flying 63 foot cacti (yes they're a thing) would already suck to, let alone a fan of poison ivy leaves to the face. And like.., poison ivy aint got shit on stuff like the manchineel tree which is basically made to personally screw over whomever dares look at it funny, or the very tastefully named Suic'de plant, a plant that got it's name from a tale where someone personally airdropped themselves to the pearly gates after using it to wipe their back end after nature called. And these are real world plants, Imagine would could exist in a world where fusions of animals, and EVEN PLANTS just exist (as shown in a very VERY specific episode; th-cam.com/video/3WsTtFaoHN0/w-d-xo.html ). Your calling swamp benders F tier, but what you gunna do when they roll up with a walking army of Suic'de manchineel tree's all being controlled without the full moon. Also if you think plants are a 'hard to find' resource, clearly you don't get out much, cuz I can touch grass by walking right out my front door.
I think f tier is understandable as it would be so much more useful in so many situations to just waterbend the water out of the plant rather than usi ng the plant itself, sure there's grass everywhere but is that gonna hurt anyone
Not to mention that given enough skill you might be able to make reusable armor out of a lot of plants. Even grass to a certain degree. Or at least long thin weeds. Some might think I'm joking but I'm serious about making grass or weed armor. Remember that many grasses and weeds by extension are made of fiber. You know that long stringy stuff you have to peel off of corn underneath the leaves. Just twist enough of those fibers and you can make rope. And you can make armor by doing specific weaves with fiber to make a strong, flexible textile armor. Heck, Mythbusters from years ago made japanese PAPER armor! (If memory serves me correctly it was by no means the best armor compared to heat treated metal and it was only a few pounds shy from typically weighted metal armor but still it was better than no armor at all.) And being able to repair your armor on the move would be invaluable in a large army! Do I think overall that swampbending is worse than many others in terms of combat? Definitely. But if you want to become a walking tank that can sponge attacks for your friends just as Swamp guy showed during the invasion, I would put Swampbending in B tier at least. Looking at Seismic sense having absolutely no ability to attack at all while swampbending CAN to a CERTAIN degree, I would argue that Swampbending is better than Seismic sense.
I agree Swamp benders are one of those sub bending that I want to see expanded upon, theoretically it’s not just swamp although it’s an the area they could thrive in the most, they can use any really any plant since most of its water and plants are very varied and a team of plant benders can do a lot more
"the odds of a firebender finding themselves in the arctic are like pretty slim" meanwhile zuko and iro in episode 1 "are we chopped liver?" (although to be fair that was the antarctic , we had to wai until the end of the first season to see THOUSANDS of fire bender in the arctic XD)
Only a few minutes in and already love your take on combustion bending. Also was wondering during the show why nobody thought to choke Kovira out with her own collar.
One reason air bending is so OP is due to the simple fact that it can’t really be restricted like the other three bending styles. To illustrate this point, let’s look at the Red Lotus. Ming Hua, a water bender, was imprisoned in a volcano, the heat removing almost any excess water she could use to escape. Ghazan, an earth bender, was held far out at sea in a wooden boat, eliminating any access to earth. P’Li, a fire bender, was held deep beneath a tundra in the South Pole, the extreme cold preventing her from fire bending. But even if Zaheer didn’t have the element of surprise with his use of air bending to escape, air can’t be restricted in the same way as the other three disciplines as it is everywhere. Earth can be purified past a bendable state, heat can be lowered to near absolute zero and water can be all but constantly evaporated in a suitably hot environment. But not air.
I imagine with the air, you likely can see it. Like how when your grilling stuff, the air looks funny above the grill, sorta like that. I don't know the scientific term but I believe it's the change in the air that makes it visible. Now you may ask "What about when there's wind". You're telling me that the air that a air bender manipulates is going to apply the same amount of force that a light breeze will?
@@stafastacks1760 but u see the things that it’s affecting same concept applies, the opponents would see the dirt and debris. not to mention most air bending is concentrated columns and plumes of air and not usually just giant all encompassing hurricane winds that’s why enemies are always dodging or blocking airbender attacks, because they’re visible
@@Sennodev i disagree attacks from airbenders seem to be dodge and blocked, even if you do read the benders movements you still wouldn't be able to dodge an attack you can't see since you dont know the range or magnitude of the attack that's kinda been extinct for 100 years
Blood bending is the most messed up of all. In ATLA the moon rule was created cause manipulatig blood pretty much means bending not only the water in It but also the chi of that person so it's like water and energy bending combined, so it's only natural that a water bender needs extra energy from the moon spirit to achieve that. But then in Korra that rule was rewrited ( for amon's family ONLY though) without any reason and that generated lots of confusion in the worldbuilding. I love TLOK but It has enormous plot holes conversely ATLA was simply perfect in these regards.
this is 100% spot on EXCEPT that gripe you got with lightning bending. I mean its really not that bad of a charge time you're looking at 4-5 sec beginner and 1-2 sec adept. against any other bending if you put a small distance between you and your opponent you should be able to get shots off. and if this wasn't PG-13 world anybody who even gets grazed by lightning is donzo
I don't see why people consider bloodbending to be the definitive strongest subskill. Every bending type has their "win condition bending type" Lava, Combustion, Blood and... Vacuums. For Vacuums there haven't canonically been a bunch of uses for it. Zaheer did it, but that was basic. Gyatso might've done it, but the only one that really did it was Yangchen, she used it when fighting combustion benders, removing all the air in a room completely negating their firebending and then making it rush back in essentially exploding their eardrums and lungs. It's a pretty dark type of bending that does canonically exist. We don't see it used a lot because it isn't very monk-like to do. Lavabending is extremely lethal, just one splash can kill everyone and blocking it is very hard (idk what fire, air, ice or stone are really gonna do). You just have to overpower it with another stronger strike (like how an airbending can block a rock). The biggest flaw is that it is seemingly pretty slow. Combustion has by far the longest range of any bending ability and just... instantly kills anyone. Combustion man nearly killed the entire gaang with a single blow TWICE being saved once by Toph using wallhacks and Zuko tarzanning his way into him. That's strong. Really strong. liberty benders are built stronger (the process of making someone a combustion bender is if I remember correctly extremely dangerous (using it when you can't kills you) and also physically demanding, every combustion bender we know (I think it's about six) is built like a tank). The ideal combustion bender just sneaks up on an enemy and kills them in their sleep, they can do this from many meters away. The catch, your chakra needs to be insanely well focussed to pull this off, if it aint, you're gonna kill yourself. This would also mean Combustion benders would also be pretty good lightning benders, since this also needs the supreme focus thing to work, but why use lightning when you give them some of that sweet sweet liberty. However, firebenders, if strong enough, can block most of a blow (which still throws them away but saves them from instantly dying) Bloodbending is absolutely OP, but it has that one flaw that everyone forgets. It's limited to a full moon. It doesn't help that 60% of the bloodbenders we see didn't have this limit but the general consensus is that you still can't do it without a full moon. Then there's some other problems, if you're not extremely precise you can still get killed (like how Mako blitzed Amon, an expert bloodbender). Get's hard countered by any stronger waterbender or the avatar when they enter creative mode. It's range is also seemingly not incredibly long. Except for Yakone, bending multiple people simultaneously should also be pretty hard if they don't stand next to eachother. The way I see it, bloodbending gets more sluggish if you do it on multiple people Tarlok used it to knock some people out which isn't too hard (just make blood go down) the same goes for Yakone with some more precision because Yakone is a Waterbending god. Without Yakone & Co, bloodbending is pretty weak. Limited to just the full moon and overpowered by waterbending or just multiple people.
Spirit Projection: D Don't get me wrong, it has its uses. But they amount to scouting and long distance communication. It has no combat applications, and isn't that interesting to look at. Energy Bending: C It's got more uses than Spirit Projection. It does what Ty Lee does to benders, but permanently. And if can reverse the loss of bending, even from Bloodbending-induced bending loss. It's also a huge visual spectacle (at least the first time Aang used it). Also, range isn't an issue considering the several amounts of times fights between benders have gone melee (namely Aang and Zuko fights, the one from the whole Tracking Girl episode in TLA Book 1 being a highlight). Combustion: C It's just shooting forehead lasers. It's too much of a one trick pony, and the 2 people with it have accidentally killed themselves. Not to mention how easy it is to debilitate a Combustion user. Metalbending: B Not that good in the TLA world where metal isn't that prevalent outside the Fire Nation. Much more usable in the Korra era, where it also got a huge glow up due to Toph refining it and teaching it to people. Even still, the fact that you can't really come across metal as easily as earth or even water, with the alternative being to come strapped with your own metal at the risk of another metalbending turning that against you puts it at middle tier. Healing: D Again, useful. But it's not that interesting to look at and isn't combat usable. Mudbending: C It's just dirty water/earth bending. Nothing special about it other than 2 of the 4 bending styles can use it. Swampbending: C More of a proof of concept how far Waterbending can go in regards to using water in stuff to manipulate the thing it's in. Otherwise, really niche, and really weak. Sandbending: B Deserts are a thing as are beaches. Way less niche than Swampbending, and way more useful. Also, it's just smaller earth in large collections. I don't see why you couldn't grind up Earth to turn it into "grains" to "Sandbend" with it for the added versatility the different bendable grants. Lavabending: S It's busted. Only real negative I can say is that I think it suffers the same downside Fire tends to suffer in shows like this; Yeah, you can shoot fire, but rarely does it actually seriously burn people, and if it is, it's against something like robots or White Zetsu. Expendable units people don't care about. Lightningbending: A It's cool AF. Lightning Redirection isn't a problem since I think that's rare (Iroh, Zuko, and Aang are the only ones I can think of that can use it within the TV show), and you can always learn Redirection yourself to redirect your redirected Lightning (like Azula learned to do). The charge speed is also inconsistent. Iroh and Azula take forever to do it, yet Ozai managed to charged and fire a bolt at Zuko within like a second. And then Mako close-range zapped Hamon with no charge. Flight: A It's Flight. It's never not useful to have. Assuming that's all you have and no actual bending ability, it's still pretty damn good to have. Bloodbending: SSS Shit's busted, especially with Hamon, Tarloc, and their dad. Pray that was just a genetic thing with them and not something any Waterbender could do with enough training. Icebending: C Really good in the Arctic and Antarctic. Near unusable outside that. And it's not even that great without the ability to turn it into Water. Seismic Sense: A Good support skill that works well with Earthbending, and would still be helpful without Earthbending. At the very least, it's good for finding and tracking people. Main Bending Styles (worst to best): Fire: It's nice that it's usable at almost all times. But that's all it really has going for it. Water shuts it down, Earth is durable enough to effectively do the same in most cases, and Air, which Fire needs, can counter it as well. All Fire has going for it is usability. It's got AoE. Precision. Ranged Attacks. Melee Attacks (remember when Zuko made knives out of Fire). Speed. Power. It can do a lot of different things as far as offense is concerned, and since a lot of Firebending seems a lot more Martial Arts based with all the punches and kicks used for their attacks, a Firebender is probably the best fighter without their bending. Sub-Bending Styles only really grant a more lethal ranged attack. Nice, but pretty basic. Water: Despite 70% of Earth being water, you're probably not going to be around massive bodies of water as often as you'd like. Thankfully, water is a versatile element. You can control plants with water in them or extract the water to just use that. You can freeze it for additional lethality and immobilization. And WHEN you've got a river, a lake, or an ocean backing you, you can control massive amounts of space with your offense while simultaneously defending. Not to mention changing water to a gas to obstruct vision and do who knows what with that vapor surrounding your opponents. Still, the relative rarity of this advantage state and the severe underpoweredness of the disadvantage state stops Waterbending from going above 3rd place. That and Bloodbending's potential being unknown. TLA only showed it being usable under a full moon, and the only Korra era Bloodbenders might've just been genetic prodigies. There's no evidence to support the idea that a regular Bloodbender like Katara could match Hamon's or even Tarloc's prowess with the art. Earth: Conversely, you're probably going to be able to Earthbend in most cases given that most civilizations have loads of land around them. As long as you're not on a ship or plane, you can probably Earthbend. And Earthbending is a very good Style given the raw power and [ground] range, defense, and even some degree of stealth ability as well as construction uses it has. It kinda sucks that Metal and Lava aren't something all Earthbenders can do, but you're kind of a god if you can lavabend, and Metalbending is pretty handy so long as no pure metals are involved. And since Sandbending is something all Earthbenders can learn to do, the Water/Air Bending like style is a nice compliment to Earth's main abilities if you're in a place where Sand is an option (assuming you can't just create your own Grain Earth). Air: Needs no explaining. It's got offense of the fast and focused to the strong and wide-ranged. It's got defense. It's got mobility and evasion out the rear. It's got impressive lethality. It's always usable (more so than Fire). It's got a good (admittedly unnecessary) Sub-Bending Style, and Spirit Projection has its uses. It does everything. Thank goodness the Fire Nation were the violent ones and not the Air Nomads. Because they'd have messed the world up.
No Waterbending is literally the best nothing counters it, it has the most everyday modern uses, and probably be able to bend most liquids like soap, wax, some water based poison, and some acids.
@@1ts_7r1pp You'll almost never have enough access to regular water let alone that kind of stuff to do the levels of damage Air, Fire, and Earth can do unless you're living in a very specific environment or just happen to be out on the ocean for whatever reason. Water is a super situational bending element hindered by environmental factors (barring hax like Hamon and his family). Air and Fire don't have that issue, and Earth doesn't suffer as much since we literally live on land and will very rarely NOT be on/near it.
@@espurrseyes42 you don't need to be in an environment like an ocean to do damage, as shown by Hama, and when Katara and Aang destroyed the fire nation drill. And even if you are in a desert, you can still use sweat, urine, saliva, etc.
@@1ts_7r1pp Once again, you aren't going to have enough of that stuff to match the DPS the other elements can put out. Even in the case of Hama, she wouldn't have been able to do that without all the plantlife around to drain water out of. Bringing her up only backs up my point about how situational waterbending is. Outside of specific situations like this where you're in a water-heavy location, sweat, piss, and spit aren't going to be enough to win a real fight in the vast majority of cases. Also, you say "destroyed the drill" as if it didn't take practically the whole episode and a ton of in-universe time on top of the combined efforts of 3 benders and bending styles to take down. It took a LONG time to SLOWLY cut through a single steel pillar in The Drill, even more time to do partially do the same for the rest (granting enough time for Azula and co. to figure out what was going on and start interfering), and this was all SETUP so Aang could destroy The Drill later by carving an X into the top of it, carving a stray boulder into a spike, and using a combination of air and earthbending technique to land the finishing blow that destroyed it. The Drill wasn't destroyed solely by waterbending, let alone by raw DPS, and it certainly wasn't quick and easy. If anything, I'd sooner credit that W to earthbending, as not only was it earth that dealt the killing blow, but Toph's assist to Katara allowed them to clog up the pipe (aiding with the overall damage of the final blow), and the whole idea to destroy The Drill this way based on Toph's earthbending philosophy.
@@espurrseyes42 I do sea your point (pun intended) but I believe that not only in a modern world that there is water everywhere, but also that other than fighting water would be more useful in everyday life.
I think Avatar’s balancing system makes elements as strong or as weak as the story needs Air benders are monks based on pacifism so the story needs them to be evasive. Since they rarely attack, they need to be powerful when they do. Water benders bend one of the least immediately threatening elements so they need different sub bending areas. Water isn’t always abundant so they need to be able to pull water out of anywhere. When it is abundant in areas, it needs to be a slow bending style. Earth bending is slow since it’s rarely never abundant. And since earth could easily crush someone, it needs to be more dodge-able. Also since it’s abundant, earth bending can’t pull earth out of things like human bodies. Korra nerfed metal bending as well so they could have robots. Fire bending never burns people because if it did then it’d be a quick fight for anyone hit with a large fireball. Also fire is almost never naturally present so of course they need to conjure it. Lightening bending would be an instant kill if it was as fast as actual electricity. It’s hard to say which is the best since the show never wants that to be obvious lol
@@kevinplonergan Firebending is like one of those elements that you don't need to be at certain area to bend and plus as the guy stated if avatar wasn't a kid show people would be easily burned. The air nomads are pacifist so they were ambushed and killed and earthbenders probably got themselves in situations that put then at a disadvantage. Fire bending is the best on offensive abilities which can make explosions and usually comes at a fast speed. I think you underestimate firebending
@@endgame4613 Fire bending in the movie is awful in the show its great and powerful but in the movie its objectively the weakest, what happens if someone destroys your source of firebending
I feel that air bending does definitely have some defensive capabilities. They could literally just use a giant gust of air to blow the obstacles away from them. The can take air out of fire, making it extinguish as well.
The healing being in C is the biggest insult IMO, out of all the elements there is only one sub category that can heal, plus imagine the monopoly you could have over the entire pharmaceutical industry if you play your cards right
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The reason why we self-nerfed lava bending is because in the show lava bending couldn’t really be used to hurt or attack enemies because of how deadly it is
yeah
if you stand on lava you would almost immidietly ignite into flames right there and then and die in a few seconds.
dont know how quick it would be you only touch it, but you are getting HIT with a lava projectile
idk i always thought lava bending was op
the didnt attack anyone with lava bc avatar is owned by nickelodeon
I mean IF IF you could bend lava in real life it would be so EASY to kill someone just throw a pool of lava on someone their dead.
@@AuzzieKai every bending will make it easy it kill people irl people irl aren't really that hard to kill just sneak up on them with a knife and that's it although you will be spending the rest of your life on nail
"The odds of a firebender finding themselves in the arctic is pretty slim"
*zuko has entered the chat*
my guy is acting like a fir bender in the artic is more rare than an earthbender suspended 500ft in the sky inside a floating log cabin
*entered the Arctic
So did an entire naval force, on a full moon... How did they not think to arrive a day later to avoid that being the "strategic masterminds" that conquered the entire planet save for a few places?!
@@willschroeder1407 that’s what I was thinking why did he act like a floating cabin in the air will ever happen
@@flickerzzz204 what ??
Sure a firebender could melt the metal coming at them, but then they have just traded a fast-moving metal projectile coming at their face for a fast-moving MOLTEN metal projectile coming at their face.
I think that would be an appropriate time to panic
That sounds fucking terrifying
Also if a earth bender can somehow learn lavabending and metal bending they can control the metal when it melts so 😥
Aka, the logic behind the Madalorians using projectile weapons XD
But not all earth benders can bend molten earth so it might win them the fight
I was rewatching avatar last airbender and I noticed most of the items created by the fire nation were made out of metal. All their tanks, army vehicles and even their buildings and prisons. They had a very industrial style of things and it got me thinking. That’s the only thing in the show that people couldn’t Bend until toph created metal bending. They used it to protect themselves and had an advantage over most benders
You have to touch an object to metal bend it.This proves its very time comsuming and as you bend,the soldiers can bail out ad attack you
@@ZAINFAME_09wrong you don't have to touch anything
@@ZAINFAME_09it was only when toph first invented it, she improved it over time annd u didnt need to touch sht
How do you think they melted that metal into shape and fueled all of their machines? Combustion, fire, electricity? These are all fuel sources. Of course they were using them
It was broken back then, but in the legend of korra more stuff was made out of purer metal. MUCH more expensive and outright impractical in some areas, yes, but it completely negates metalbending
I said it once, I'll say it again. R-Rated avatar would be awesome and I'd watch the shit out of that.
Just imagine: every little bending ability turned up to eleven and fully exploiting the lethal abilities without the constraints of a kids show.
Metal bending to slice people in half, lightning bending which leaves more than just a scar, the possibility of bonebending for earth benders, which has been explored in theories, bending not only air but other gasses, the possibilities are literally endless!
I mean if they have bones made of earth then okay
@@mussazerfu5539 The way metal bending works - finding impurities inside of the metal to bend - could be applicable to bones as well with minerals like calcium e.g. The idea of bonebending has been explored in some comics as well.
Blood benders ripping the blood out of there victims and using it as a weapon
That sounds fucking awesome
@@-axn- are there rocks just flowing in the bloodstream? Hell no
Didn't Avatar Kyoshi literally freeze her enemies organs instantly killing them? that is beyond OP.
Yep, she froze someone's heart and lungs.
@@vukkulvar9769 If that’s the case she could probably blood bend without a full moon, since she was bending their blood to become ice. Man kyoshi is probably the most op and ruthless avatar ever
Yeah but you need to be a great water bander, great lvl of precision and high understanding of anatomy
@@pedrooliveirasantos6699yangchen..
I thought about that and realized that you could do the reverse and put a whole new spin on the phrase “makes my blood boil.” 😈
I fully agree wit this list. But let's not forget when Aang went to the air bending temple and saw Monk Gyatso's dead body on top of a pile of fire nation bodies. He was a pacifist and still caught a mountain of bodies on his way out. Air bending is the scariest since we only just started to scratch the surface of how deadly it is offensively with Zahir and he had only had bending for a short period of time not even fully able to master it.
true
Also those were sozin comet powered fire benders
not to mention the fact that air can become sharper than a knife with enough velocity or by adding sand glass etc
@@YoItsKernal right. i actually never thought about it that way
@@the_pink_p9059 i mean we've seen aang slice through stone with air alone
Something I don't see often talked about with Firebenders is when Avatar Roku seemed to bend the heat out of the Volcano. If Firebenders can do that, thats a whole bunch of options.
Edit: turns out that was Sozen. Point still stands. That’s an underrated ability.
Wasn't that Sozin?
@@Endless-firesozen bended the vapor both of them are different breeds
@@Endless-fire That was sozen
This reminder made me go back and rewatch to check. Yes it was Firelord Sozin that bent the heat out of the volcano, not Avatar Roku.
Sozin*?
I've always had this idea of waterbenders increasing the temperature to make boiling water instead of freezing it. The idea just sounds so fitting for a villian
Katara literally makes steam in the show to provide cover when they're in that fire nation ship (and a lot of it too, which is kind of crazy in a combat scenario when you think about how hot steam actually is)
Imagine that mixed with blood bending...
@@TheRealAndrewMurray Boiling someone's blood might be the peak war crime I've heard of in Avatar 😂
@@ilovemusic3188 that's mist
@@TheRealAndrewMurray the person would probably die instantly if you boil their blood to much
one quick point I feel the need to mention, Toph literally stated in legend of Korra that any earth bender can learn metal bending if trained well enough, it's not like lava bending or explosion bending where only certain unique individuals can develop the ability, its more akin to lightning bending: any bender of the base element can learn the technique but they need the right teacher and mental capacity to learn and understand it. the reason Bolin failed to learn it is because he never found the right teacher, focused more on lava bending when he discovered he had the ability, and didn't have the needed mental state to perform the techniques. most metal benders we see in the franchise are stoic, focused, determined, and view their abilities as something to be worked and maintained. their personalities match the process of producing and maintaining metal, but Bolin lacked those personality traits which is what's implied to be the biggest factor stopping him from metal bending. its like how in the first series Zuko couldn't produce his own lightning not because he lacked the ability outright but because the technique required a clear focused mind, and Zuko was always struggling with his emotional imbalance
They also say in legend of korra when korra learns metalbending in zao fu that its usually only 1 in 10 earthbenders that can metalbend. It's like how all humans can do a backflip in theory but most people can't and some people are too out of shape for it so it's not realistic to include metalbending as a part of base earthbending. And if you wanna argue the same thing for lightningbending (even though we see later in the legend of korra that its super common and the fact zuko couldn't do it still was uncommon), firebending is still slightly advantaged over earthbending
@@hughmungus99 considering the way toph invented it, it's probably based on how good the earthbender's seismic sense is
@@perep_ I don’t really think it has anything to do with seismic sense.
To be fair, I'm of the mind that Lightning Bending SHOULDN'T be bendable by anyone that can bend Fire.
Lighting is such a dangerous and hard to master Sub-Element that it should moreso be innate aptitude that determines your ability to bend it.
I think that was the biggest issue I had with the Elements in Korra. Almost anyone can bend anything of their Element's sub abilities like no tomorrow, save for Lava and Combustion only
@@X_Juice_X
Considering that's how Toph figured it out before anyone else... yeah I'm pretty sure some level of knowledge on Seismic Sense had something to do with it 🤔
It helps to be able to sense and visualize the earth within the Metal
It's always bugged me that no one ever talks about how blood bending is only difficult because it's bending the water in a living thing in such a way that you don't accidently violently rip the water out of it...
Technically nothing is stopping any water bender from ripping the water from their opponents body in the same way we've seen them do to plants.
No one talks about it because that was never even implied in the show. You just made it up
@@20somethingcimena "The childrens show on Nickelodeon never talked about ripping the water out of a living creatures body as a means to kill them , their for its not possible. "
What then is your belief as to why water in an animal is harder to bend? You clearly have some evidence to support why I'm wrong other than this gory detail not being brought up. why else would you feel the need to comment and call me liar?
@@PietrysCA It's difficult because the writers needed a reason why bloodbending isn't used by every single waterbender. Then we have to work backwards from there and come up with an in-universe explanation. Here's some:
1. Blood isn't pure water. Just as bending vines or mud is unnatural and difficult for most waterbenders, so is blood.
2. It's physically resisted by the person being bent. People aren't just going to let you bend them, they can move on their own.
3. People have spirits, souls. They aren't inanimate objects. They possess qualities beyond that of mere matter.
4. The blood bender is trying not to rip the water out of the target. (I think this is the weakest argument because we've seen plenty of blood benders who didn't seem to mind hurting people.)
And for what it's worth, you did make this up and it was never implied in the show. Nobody is calling you a liar. Don't project.
@@ethanrogers9627 @Ethan Rogers 1. Blood is mostly water, and it's never said that bending vines is difficult. It is shown how ever that it's very easy to remove the water from plants.
2. If someone resisted with all their physical might, and a water bender used their bending to its maximum to move the water in their body, the water would either be removed, or they would stop resisting from the pain.
3. Zero evidence to suggest that having a soul makes something resistant to bending.
4. The weakest argument because some water benders like causing pain?
That makes no sense.
I believe the reason that they don't even touch on the subject is because it is a kids show. They can't exactly have people being violently killed.
Calling someone out in the above manner, with a cheap quip and "you made that up"
Is literally calling them a liar.
@@PietrysCA All fair points. Fact is, there isn't an in-universe explanation for why it's difficult. We're just speculating. And tbh there doesn't need to be, it's nicer when things just... are. That's partly why AtLA > TLoK. It wouldn't make the show any more compelling if they asked us to believe that blood benders are all kindly not exploding their enemies, it'd just raise more questions. They chose not to explain it at all, and we choose to accept that because it simply FEELS right for the more OP abilities to be more difficult.
Also, you're not a liar if you believe it to be true, even if you made it up. He's not literally calling you a liar. You're not being called out. It's not a cheap quip. Nothing is personal. You aren't under attack. You're just having your opinions questioned.
The scenario you gave for why earth bender is the worst was such an extreme example…like when would something like that ever happen naturally….like they would probably agree to be suspend 1000ft in the air in a log cabin for like a fighting match of some sort before the plot itself actually finds a way to have that happen in the story
That's the core of the comparison. Take everything away from the benders and literally have them fight with nothing.
I mean ya but say in show... all the earth benders on the prison barge? So anywhere at sea is apparently too far from rocks. And if Toph didn't know metal bending she'd have been fucked on the airships. So like its not that uncommon a scenario in show?
Boat on the ocean, or a ballon/plane, etc. etc.
@@leemc9943 it still makes no sense cause everywhere you go there is dirt and rocks, with earthbending you will basically always have materials so it makes no sense
@@florg5418 the point of the so called "experiment" is to see which style is the strongest without tools, and talking about the style alone. This is a scientific approach where you will take away everything not necessary for the subjects to live. They can't put them in a vacuum tp remove air because then they will all die, since air is a necessity, no matter what kind of bending you use. dirt is something a person can live without long enough to conduct a fight. Yes, in a normal scenario in a normal place with dirt all around, earthbenders will have an advantage. But we are talking about the style alone, without any tools you can find in your surroundings. Hope that makes sense.
Everyone is impressed with Zaheer's "suck the air out of their lungs" technique when they don't realize that if he did the exact opposite he could pop their lungs effectively instant killing basically anyone before they could do anything. Even Amon would be able to be an Airbender with no morals, can't blood bend if your chest has already exploded...
Edit: I'm not saying airbending is better than blood bending, I'm saying that either bender can essentially instant kill if they really wanted to and a fight between the two would not be about who was the better bender but more about who was faster, or saw the other one coming or whatever. About lungs exploding, when giving CPR to children you have to be very careful because they don't have a very big lung capacity and their lungs would pop if you aren't careful. It stands to reason that you could do the same to an adult if you could bend a ton of air into their lungs really really fast. Even if you didn't do it fast enough, overinflating someone's lungs would cause them to puncture, causing air to escape into their chest cavity and causing their lungs to collapse. Even if that doesn't instantly kill you, I highly doubt you'll be in the condition to bend, much less fight back.
Removing all the air would make the lungs collapse so same result either way
@@dinosaurusrex1482 Right but shoving air in is more lethal because popping someone's lungs is an instant kill and Zaheer's choke is more of a theatrical, dramatic, slow, painful death.
Cant airbend if a waterbender holds you still by the water in your muscles! Definitely a battle of speed and reaction
Maybe they didn’t want to do that maybe cuz the queen might spit out blood???
@@HeresTonez Totally agree
I’ve always thought earth bending was the best. Just being able to effectively build whatever you can imagine is awesome outside of fighting. And if real people could bend, earth bending would probably be extremely valued for that very reason. Rome could literally be built in a day with enough earth benders. Then, you add Metal and Lava bending to make it even more diverse and op. Earth for the win, even if air is literally the deadliest style.
Zuko vs fire nation with just his swords : Single Handedly defeats dozens easily.
Zuko vs a single Earth Militia Leader: defeated before he could even get in range to swing his sword. Struggles several times throughout the show against Earth Benders.
As a bonus, in the first season when it shows Zuko being banished. It was made clear in the war room that the fire nation could not fight earth kingdom armies head on. They used maneuverability and flank war tactics to win.
Earth Benders are stronger, without sub bending.
@@CC-iu7sq the thing with Fire is alors that Firefox is a bug source of energy.
For a nation, limitless energy is a way more usefull tool than buildings, since well ... we can build things without earth bending
I think earth benders can fly just like float the rock under tou
Earth: building, farming, transportation
Water: crops watering regulation, ice to preserve food, guaranteed drinkable water
The best elements
Yeah I think Earth is the best, even if you leave planet Earth and go to another planet, there is still rocks you can bend, as well as meteorites in space. There's no fire, water or air in most of outer space, but you will find Earth a lot.
The most broken and OP aspect of Amon and Yakone's bloodbending wasn't the fact that they could do it all the time, even without a full moon, it was that they could do it psychically, without moving any part of their bodies. All other bending in the series requires physical movement of some sort to activate. Even when Bumi flexed his ability to Earthbend while chained inside an iron coffin, he was moving the muscles of his face. But Amon and Yakone's psychic bloodbending is activated by thought alone. And bloodbending restricts the movements of the opponent. Psychic Bloodbending is thus a straight up hard counter to every other bending style. Normal bloodbending, even if done without the full moon, can be countered by the other bending styles by restricting the bloodbender's movement. Conversely, if any of the other bending styles had the same psychic mutation, they could fight back much more effectively against a psychic bloodbender, as even if their movements are restricted by the bloodbending, they can still counterattack by bending with their minds.
Don’t forget he could also mess with their brain and take away their bending and control multiple people at once which is even more stupidly over powered
What about ming hua? She dosent even have arms yet she can still controll her water tenticals whilst barely even looking at them
In the old show it was stated that only the avatar in avatar state could bend like that. Of course bending evolves but I liked that idea
Let’s push air bending even higher. Question is air bending just air? Or is it any gaseous substance. If it is any gas, then this gets far too dark for a kid show real quick. An air bender with a gas mask would be the most terrifying thing you could encounter in the Avatar world.
Mustard gas bending lol
There's a villain in One Piece who has the "Gas" devil fruit which allows him to turn into and manipulate gases so he can do stuff like just create mini vacuums removing oxygen from the air or spawn highly combustable gases on a whim to create explosions.
@@caldw615 I love One Piece but you can't compare OP to Avatar
@@lukas-kevynmuller6697 I just did though? Comparing two different things for their similarities and differences is a thing v:
@@abstract_extremist ☠️
"The fact that [Airbenders] control the element that people need to breathe... Yeah, that's a pretty big advantage."
Fun little theory related to that!
So you know how in "The Southern Air Temple," we are greeted to the sight of Monk Gyatso's corpse surrounded by the bodies of Firebenders? While it is highly implied, and the most likely scenario, that the pacifist monk managed to fend them all off before succumbing to his injuries, some fans have theorized that Gyatso *bended all the oxygen out of the room, taking the Firebenders with him.*
Even if that wasn't the case, even if Monk Gyatso died due to a fatal blow as opposed to fatal injuries, we are talking about an old friendly monk successfully beating a group of homicidal pyromaniacs who can and will burn everything in their path.
Needless to say, yeah, Airbending is OP.
Add this is possibly during sozin's comet when the fire nation attacked
@@Talyfia Oh man I forgot about that, yeah. Dude not only warded off a group of Fire Nation soldiers, he did so when they were in top form and and had their powers maxed out. It wasn't just a 1vMany. It was more akin to a 1 versus entire army of doped up soldiers.
Dont forget the detail that Monk Gyatsu's robe and wooden necklace weren't burnt. This means he only died of exhaustion.
His body gave up. The fire benders didn't win they just didn't lose
@@Vugtis_El_VillaVODS good grief Gyatso was cracked
May I just add that by taking the air out of a particular space, aka creating a vacuum, fire wouldn't work properly. Those firebenders up against Gyatso, they wouldn't be able to harm him with a fireball since its range will be limited to just a few inches from it's source which is their knuckles.
Also these air nomads live high up in a mountain. Those are the same type of people who's used to thinner air than on the flatlands. If Gyatso would expand his vacuum space to encompass all that firebender mob with him starting from his position, he would be able to out-breathe them out of sheer lung capacity advantage.
I will say while it’s true Firebenders don’t fare well in cold climates, they do have that fire breathing technique that keeps them warm on the inside so they’re not completely screwed in survival at least.
Yeah but they still absolutely fucked in a fight, and that fire breath really only prolongs their survival until they can find help or shelter, bc if I remember correctly if aang hadn’t just randomly stumbled upon zukos body in the ice he wouldn’t been dead right then and there
@@bleachkid44 yeah that’s what I said, it helps them in their survival.
its also a theory that the royal family spreaded lies to make normal citizen think they're better that way making a fire bender citezen unable to achieve his full potential as a bender. that would make a fire bender look weaker
@@bleachkid44 Aang didn’t randomly stumble upon him. Zuko got knocked out by Katara right next to him. His breath of fire was completely sufficient in keeping him alive in the arctic tundra if not for literally getting in a fight.
Apparently its a really high level technique
fun fact: Fire has force behind it, just like air, they could just do an upward attack and the metal shards are out of their way, or just a forward attack to make it lose all momentum
Air contains 21% of oxygen, fire only requires 16%
Yea katara literally got knocked out by a sun amped Zuko even though she blocked the attack.
@@matijasostojic4288 Fire is powerful enough to make you fly, not as good as air but you can still do it. Just like Azula in prison or General Iroh going from one airplane to another.
but you cant stop fast ones, you need to evade
@@_bee_1088good firebenders (Azula) can use firebending for movement, so firebenders aren't completely outclassed in that department.
I've theorized that air benders could sound bend which would be incredibly deadly. Sound between 30-65 hertz extinguishes fire. Loud sounds can knock you out and even kill. You could also mimic voices for disguise and talk to someone in secret.
I mean thinking about it. An extremely powerful air bender could literally produce concussive waves. Have fun dodging that.
dude if airbenders could SOUND bend?? they would be unstoppable imagine the possibilities!
an air bender, in theory, should be able to bend the air inside someone and since oxygen (which is in a way air) flows in the entire body, they should effectively be able to mimic blood bending. just a thought tho
@@northernpolaris9895 oxygen isnt air. air is a combination of many different particles. however if the airbender is capable of manipulating each component of air specifically then yeah that would be extremely overpowered and they would undoubtably be able to do what you suggested
@@C1iffordd exactly, remember that water is 33% oxygen (H2 O), however water benders can’t bend air at all.
Even as a kid I always felt Airbending was just the best. The fact that Aang could take on literally most enemies with just that rather than all 4 elements shows how powerful it is in the face of other benders who were literally hunting him and trying to kill him
Aang was the first airbender that anyone could fight in at least a hundred years, so it's more of a "not knowing how to fight it" rather than "op bending"...
But it is kinda op let's be real
@@ManuelRodriguez-dr2cn Yep Aang says it in the first or 2nd episode "I bet you've never fought an airbender. I bet I can take both of you with my hands tied." And he was right. Those two firebenders probably only fought earth benders their whole careers and MAYBE one or two water benders. It was Sozen's comet and total ambush that really knocked out the air nation.
With all of that said I'd still prefer to be a firebender. All of the other discipline may have a bunch of overpowered sub-techniques but those are the exceptions not the rule and chances are you won't be born with capabilities to perform them or even encounter them in your entire life. (I don't count Korra because that whole show was a trainwreck lmao)
@@ManuelRodriguez-dr2cn he was also able to dodge very easily too, imagine how hard it would be if your opponent was always jumping high and dodging everything
Nobody knew how to fight aang
I definitely agree that blood bending is S tier. I just wanted to add some points I feel like not many people think about because everyone focuses on the combat aspects of blood bending. But just think about how amazing it could be if combined with healing. You can stop someone from bleeding out or find a blood clot you could even potentially find toxins in the blood or do a transfusion. And probably many other things. Like yeah it’s super scary and kinda F-d up in some of its uses I am 1000% sure it could be used to advance medical practices if studied properly.
That's really true!!
The show is rather tame with how bloodbending could be used because it's trying to be suitable for kids but I think in a combat scenario the whole "puppet master" aspect is actually the least of your worries. You could do stuff like force blood in the heart to stop moving to cause a heart attack, make the water in someone's eyes burst, cause a stroke by forcing blood to the brain a certain way etc.
@@caldw615 oh yeah for sure. Pinch off one artery and boom they are done. My main point was that people (just like now lol) tend to view blood bending in an almost exclusive combat/violence driven light. Probably because that is also how the show presents it. But if we think about how it could be used non combatively the possibilities are just as endless. If metal benders can tell if people are lying or just near them using seismic sense a blood bender could probably sense their pounding Hearts too. If metal benders can do acupuncture and siphon metallic toxins from the bloodstream think about what a blood bender could do when combined with water benders healing skills. I know they can’t show every possible way bending can be used in a show but it’s just fun to think about.
@@tbgifford Oh yeah like imagine being bitten by a venomous snake and managing to restrict the flow of the venom in your blood and finding a way to force it back out.
@@caldw615 yes exactly! So many uses!
I always imagined airbending being extremely OP, like imagine if airbenders learnt telekenisis simply by manipulating the air around an object, they could become earthbenders and if refined enough they could even become water benders with enough concentration. Airbending is supreme
Also good luck coming at them then with Fire bending because in that case of mastery you just lower the pressure of the air in the fire blast, good luck shooting an air bender with fire if they can pull a perfect or near perfect vacuum even just around your hands and feet
at that point you could only shoot it out of your mouth and that is a feat only seen done by iroh and ozai in any quantity that could be useful
There is air in blood and in bone
And in in water
There's a solid amount of fire benders who can breathe fire from their mouths, its still just a skill anyone can learn with enough practice@@heylolp9
Strangely, Airbenders bend air in almost the same way that fire benders bend fire, where they can only control the parts in front of their hands unless it's something like a long stream of air/fire or whatever, as opposed to water and earth benders who could control their elements without touching it. So the telekinesis wouldn't work, probably
As an Airbender, one could continuously suck the air out of their enemies lungs, essentially creating a vacuum in their lungs and asphyxiating them.
Ngl, that's messed up. I like it.
they could also do that with the air within the ears and make people deaf, have vertigo, and because disoriented.
Not really
It’s pretty clear in atla that bending doesn’t work that way
It isn’t like mortal kombat level
Think about how blood bending cannot be done often, yet full control of water should easily allow it. It’s like a martial art. Also it is clear that the elements associate with the kinds of people. When iroh speaks of the nations he doesn’t say the elements, he says the people of each nation and lists their traits. An Airbender cannot do what you described, it likely goes against their nature at an almost compulsory level.
All of this is destroyed in anything outside of atla which destroyed the world building of the series. The amount of garbage korra added, betraying major aspects of the original series was ridiculous.
Yes but it takes time more time then lightning and also it is only shown when the air bender already won or is winning
@@ducksina_row Well that would also cause them to be dizzy due to chemical imbalance in the ear.
A skilled blood bender like Yakone, literally with his mind managed to blood bend an entire court room including the Avatar and Toph who is literally the greatest earth bender period. Aang literally had to go into the avatar state to stand a chance. And I heard from somewhere that Kyoshi was so ruthless, she not only learnt blood bending, but learnt how to freeze the blood or even organs like the heart to instantly kill someone.
Kyoshi learns how to freeze internal organs from a healer who freezes organs as a way to stablize patients so they can survive grievous wounds while waiting for help to arrive.
Literally, Yakone was about to turn Aang into a pretzel. I think Blood just outclasses everything in terms of dueling or simply even fighting.
@@Pay_800 Is that not such a Kyoshi thing to do though? Learning something from a healer meant only for life-saving purposes but then using it for life-ending purposes.
@@dancostello4872 from what I know, she used the move only once, and it was out of desperation to not only beat a really strong opponent, but to also finish a fight quickly so she could save someone's life with that very same technique. I say all of this trying to avoid spoilers for the kyoshi novels, which I personally feel are an essential part of the avatar world and should 100% be read by anyone who enjoys the main series.
@@Pay_800 Oh yeah I know that, I was just making a joke about how Kyoshi hands are rated E for Everybody lmao
Wait a sec, if fire benders actually need oxygen for their flames wouldn't air benders be able to remove all the oxygen around the fire bender rendering their bending useless? This kind of falls flat though if fire benders fire doesn't require oxygen.
Not sure, flames are made by constant combustion so I'd say they couldn't. But also draining all the air around someone could maybe take too long so the firebender could react. This is just opinion tough :p
Regardless, you know what does need oxygen? The firebender.
@@diego5079 nah all fire burns oxygen so they would be screwed without it
It would consume the oxygen in the air, but that's only 21% of the air around them. Our atmosphere is mostly nitrogen, and I'm assuming the same could be said of that universe since all fire bending is not exploding in the user's face.
Is that not exactly what it looks like Monk Gyatso did when he was surrounded by fire benders?
What about bone bending? Toph was able to bone bend herself to help with her aging and also when sparing kora she still was able to sense everything she was doing. Maybe the only reason she didn’t control people with it is because the brutality of braking human bones is just gruesome.
Congratulations you've made me remember the second most terrifying bending style
Huh? Where did you get that info related to aging from?
Also while helping Korra she was sensing the LIQUID METAL in Korra's body not Korra's bones.
that was liquid metal.Toph was very formidable with her powers and i doubt she had taught this techniue to anyone before she passed
Genera Dose not suck
Bumi did that first
The opinion I disliked the most was saying that earth bending was the worst just because of a hypothetical situation where their element is useless such as up in the air, when the reality is that anywhere that humans reside and are going to fight is most likely going to be right on top of earth. Not only that Lava bending was at the top of S tier and who says that earth benders can't make their attacks massive boulders the size of cars if they train enough. They already make massive earth walls, so simply causing them to collapse on enemies or moving/throwing them towards them could be devastating.
He didn’t put the bendings in order, at the end he literally just goes through them all without moving them around which would mean he was saying earth is the strongest, completely neglecting what he said.
He went through them worst to best. He didn’t move them around because they’re all S tier.
Earthbending is pretty useless against an airbending master though, remember what aangs airbending did to that solid stone pillar during his fight against ozai, it crumbled to bits....
Also we established combustion bending or whatever its called is super powerful, aang also controlled the explosion from combustion man with airbending so he could beat combustion bending too.
Water bending is probably the only one that can come close to harming an airbender, only cause they can bloodbend on a full moon and pull water from the air around them like hamma did, its also a very flexible element and can change in between different states so maybe they can trap an airbender but an airbender could redirect anything the water bender sends at them including ice.
Firebending never stood a chance against airbending, they are strictly offensive and fast but airbenders are evasive and even faster, aang made clowns of zhao, and early season zuko, when he only knew airbending. Then ozai too when he used airbending to explode the fire from the inside out in that one scene.
The only bending style that I think can beat an airbender is metal bending but thats also under very special circumstances.
@@shinigamis_like_apples4797 You're just a simp for air bending, aren't you?
1. Aang is an Air bending prodigy. He's also the Avatar so his Air bending is incredibly powerful. Most Air benders aren't going to be that powerful. Not even close. So even though Aang dominates most benders, that doesn't mean that air bending is the best bending style.
2. Your example sucked for why Earth bending is useless sucked. That was when Aang was in the Avatar state, calling upon the combined might of all the Avatars that came before him. You can't use that as an example. In the Avatar state, a fire nation Avatar was able to make multiple volcanoes erupt simultaneously, but no one uses that feat to say that fire bending is the best bending style.
3. Earth bending is not useless. Remember the fight between Bumi and Aang? yeah, Earth bending was pretty handy there. And Bumi didn't even look like he was trying, while Aang was basically going all out. Earth bending can usually block most attacks that an air bending throws at them. the only way an air bender wins is if they're able to maneuver around their opponents defenses and catch them by surprise. A regular air bender isn't out muscling an earth bender.
4. In terms of water bending, air benders really have no way of blocking water attacks. They have to dodge. Its too slippery and versatile to easily block for an air bender since the water bender could just weave their way past any defense an air bender throws their way. They have to dodge, which, while they are quite good at dodging, is a major disadvantage.
5. Again, Aang is an Air bending prodigy. Saying because he smoked Zhao and first season Zuko, air bending is superior isn't fair. Aang is one of the best air benders in his generation, and Zhao and season one Zuko were only above average. that's not a fair fight and it has nothing to do with the bending styles.
But, one thing could tip the scales in an air benders favor. See while in the show, when someone air bends, the air always shows up blue. However, we don't know if this is for the benefit of the audience, or if the characters can actually see it in universe. If they can't, it's a huge advantage to the air bender. But I do suspect the characters can see it, given how many times we see Aang's opponents block or dodge his airbending attacks.
@@en4833 Ok let me clarify, I'm not a huge fan of LoK so I didn't see any other showcasing of airbending other than the air bending in ATLA, aka the last airbender prodigy, so excuse me if I have overestimated a normal airbenders abilities. We saw in the temple gyatso annihalted a bunch of firebender soldiers powered during sozins commet, so I thought all airbenders with training are power machines and not easy to beat for any other bender.
The examples I gave are shallow yes but they're the only ones that showcase any airbending done in ATLA so if my view is surface level, thank you for bringing it to my attention.
Let me try and give more open examples:
There was the time he kicked a boulder while flying over fir nation ships and smashed it, this was before he mastered earthbending, he wasn't powered with the avatar state but he was still able to destroy it.
Then there's apparently a fight where Tenzin from Lok was beating zaheer and until he got ganged up on by the red lotus consisting of all bending styles, he was still able to hold out for a long time, as exhausted as he was from fighting zaheer.
So again, the dodging and evasive manoeuvres are a disadvantage to an extent, but it's also an airbenders biggest strength during combat. Getting far away from your opponent to asses them and their fighting and then attacking from a different angle is a fighting style I really appreciate. Also I do favor airbending over other bending styles so I'm completely biased but that doesn't mean I hate the other bending styles, I really like earthbending. I didn't call it useless in general that would be so stupid, we live on earth, everywhere is made of earth. An earthbender has strong terrain to fight almost everywhere so its foolish to underestimate them, I'm just saying from what I have seen airbenders dont have trouble destroying solid projectiles or dodging so other than grandmasters like Bumi the KING of omashu and aang the avatar, the airbenders would have a higher chance of winning.
Also Bumis strength in combat and why he was able to defeat aang was that he was teaching aang to think outside the box and do the unexpected. He doesn't fight like a typical earthbender either, so downplaying one example because they're a master doesn't make any sense.
Thank you Danny, I'm not the only one who thinks lava bending is OP. The first time I saw Bolin lava bend, I was amazed at how cool it looked and thought about all the crazy new possibilities it can have. Also to the people who think lava bending is too slow or what not, it's because it looks like a lava bender is water bending with regular earth bending and it's freaking cool.
dude i realy dont know who are those people that thing lavabending is not op. they can creat a sea of fire and give earth benders one of the fire benders biggest advantages, the heat. its over kill
The first time we see lava bending it's the guy making a magma rasenshuriken
@@zspider1778 the only thing that I can see weakening lavabending is that they are slower than your average waterbender. But their offense is just so massive, that it's basically Fire, Earth, and Water bending all merged into a single style.
@@moondropdemon3366 Might have been the coolest thing ever
@@Vekcrazah I think that’s acc bc you can only be a lava bender if you’re the child of an earth and fire bender
I truly have never been angrier than i am at the eartbending take. "An eartbender can infinitely control the battlefield around them, but only if that battlefield is the material the comprises the entire planet"
I did not mean for this message to be so long when I started, and I apologize in advance for taking up your valuable time:
While the likelihood of an earthbender being without earth to bend is very low, I agree, I think the takeaway is supposed to be the fact that there are more theoretical scenarios that put an earthbender out of commission than other benders, especially when some of those scenarios are realistic within the ATLA/LOK universe. For example, an earthbender at the north pole, on a regular boat in the ocean, or on a flying airship (not counting the fairly rare technique of metalbending) whereas firebenders can make their fire anywhere that isn't freezing cold (sans 'breath of fire' training), airbenders are always around air, and waterbenders can pull moisture from living things as well as the atmosphere around them if they're truly in a pinch.
As an earthbender, part of your combat technique would be simply avoiding those unfavorable locations to begin with. We see earthbenders making a habit of creating their own homes with their bending, going so far as to carve out entire mountains (Omashu) to surround themselves with earth they can bend, but we've seen in both shows in multiple instances (the prison barge in the ocean that holds Haru's village, the submerged section of the Serpent's Pass, the giant Fire Nation drill for Ba Sing Se, the metal cages designed to contain earthbenders and suspend them in the air, the prison boat for Ghazan) that earthbenders have a significant location weakness that can and has been exploited to defeat them. In their element (haha), earthbenders are horribly powerful, definitively and uniquely matched to take down firebenders in most favorable locations, but the whole premise of ATLA was that firebenders were winning a 100 year world war against earthbenders, meaning that firebenders did everything in their power to make sure that earthbenders weren't within their element when fighting them.
All that to say: I totally get your beef: when is an earthbender going to be without earth when we're all stuck to the damn thing like magnets at all times? Well, turns out, when you're fighting earthbenders, you specifically engineer situations that leave earthbenders without earth to bend, so it's a surprising amount. The location weakness of earthbenders is significant enough that it has to be acknowledged in a definitive ranking of each bending's overall ability.
Lmao yeah that part was weird but in his defense while earth benders in general have ability to bend about 90% of the land surface on earth not every earth bender individually can, like sand benders are earth benders but not every earth benders knows how to sand bend so it’s not as vast as you’d think. That being said their element is definitely literally everywhere
Also he isn't basing it entirely on Combat but fire gets 2nd and he also doesn't know how a firebender would beat an earthbender except in a log cabin in the sky
yeah really dumb take when they can bend anything from to paint they don't just bend earth they can bend almost any mineral we're presented with and some have the ability to bend earth they can't see at all
There’s more water than earth
It's worth noting that airbenders can also technically generate storms too, by changing air currents over oceans in order to make typhoons. Kelsang is said to have done it in the first Kyoshi novel.
I pretty much agree with you fully, the only thing I see differently is I think all the earth related bending techniques are a bit stronger than how you presented them. Air is too strong, even in the second episode we see Aang wipe the floor with a whole ship of fire benders, the only person on that boat who could have stopped him was asleep. And yes Aang is a master who beat and ran from basic soldiers and a hot headed teen but they had manpower and Aang is also a child.
To be fair it had been a hundred years since anyone had even SEEN an Airbender and considering their pacifist nature they probably hadn't been involved in any wars or battles before that so it's unlikely anyone had seen them fight. Not to mention the fire nation had gone out of its way to destroy every written mention about the air nomads which left even their own people completely unprepared for this encounter. They were going into this completely blind and it's possible that their own apprehensions about the avatar were what helped Aang defeat them.
@@l.wannabe.l4207 I mean yeah there was definitely a shock factor but I think what the main reason was that Aang is an air bending master and the show really emphasizes on just how large the skill gap is between or normal bender and a master hence why every master we see is a crucial plot point in the story. And since the only other bending master aboard the ship was asleep and likely wouldn’t fight even if he was awake they really never stood much of a chance
Bro he legit wiped the floor with the king of the fire benders at like 13 yrs old. I believe ozai was 23 or 24 feel free to correct me. Aang had like a year total of training while ozai had 20 years , expert teachers, and a fucking comet that boosted his power to the absolute limit. Air bending for the win
@@xanderginn2922 That's not at all a fair comparison though. Ozai was wiping the floor with Aang even though Aang had mastered three elements and become adept at the fourth. Aang only won because he got the avatar state back.
@@matthewcooper4248 sang had water and air mastered. Toph said before the fight that aang still had a ways to go with earthbending and he was still training with zuko in fire. And the avatar state has its limits as well. The whole point is that ozai was supposed to be the pinnacle of fire bending, as you saw even earth and water attacks were useless against him due to the comet. Yes the avatar state played a large role but there was still a massive gap in power and overall resolve.
The video that I never thought that I needed in my life.
"I'd rather shoot lighting out of my fingertips in 40 minutes than not at all" I'm crying 😭😭😭
"Have you ever been hurt by a leaf?"
Bulbasaur: cries in razor leaf
The reason lightning bending has both a slow and fast charge rate is dependent on how much force you want to output. Like Azula charged hers up and put Zuko out of commission for a while. But when Mako did it on Amon with little charge up time, Amon was back standing at full force in less than 30 seconds. Or atleast its my personal headcannon
ya I think that's how it works it's like a charged attack the more u charge it the more damage it will do,
Azula also comes from a line of talented benders, while mako is just a normie
One thing he didn't mention related to that is the continuous fire capabilities of lightning bending when charged. When Mako was lightning bending at the spirit vines core thing, he was forming a constant ray of electricity for 30 seconds or so. That changes the comparison he did from "a sniper rifle" to "an exploding rounds minigun".
@@elliscmtk Oh yea that’s another thing, I would assume it also acts like a water gun, The beginning of the lightning is the strongest and the longer you are using it, the weaker it gets. Combat wise, once you miss the the lighting, its better just to do it different time than keep holding it
@@shinozaddy5939 Ehh, I dont think bloodline increases bending strength. Like the only instance I can imagine is Yakones lineage, but its really just an ability than an actual enhancement. Like Zuko can not lightning bend even though he’s part of the royal family
I feel like not all firebenders can lightning bend.
Here's my reason
1: Iroh explained only a select few firebenders can separate positive and negative energy to lightning bend
2: If all firebenders were able to separate positive and negative energy to lightning bend, we would've seen a lot more lightning bending when the team invaded the fire nation
Extra note: In my opinion, I feel like the longer the charge for lightning bending the more powerful the hit would be. We have seen it doesn't take that long to charge, which probably doesn't make the bending as powerful. the longer the charge the more defenseless it leaves the user, which is why they probably prefer a quick blast, not a longer blast.
Same for metal bending/lava bending.
Not all earth benders can metal bend and not all earth benders can lava bend
I feel like you could only have one or the other as a sub
Take Bolin for example
He attempted to metal bend but couldn't but we find out later he could lava bend
For Ghazan we have seen him earth bend and lava bend never metal bend. I feel like if he could've metal bend, they probably could have escaped with Korra when they first caught her. The same reason as Bolin, he tried failed later in his life finds out he can lava bend
For blood bending.
We've seen it control people which is correct.
For those who watched Korra, we saw Amon/Noatak take blood bending a step further and can actually stop people from bending by blocking their chi with blood bending. He tricked everyone in republic city by making them think he could energy bend to take people bending away which was not the case he was just blocking it.
I still liked the video so keep up the good work
Another theory I've come across - during Aang's era, there's an idea that the royal family kept the technique of lightning-bending to themselves. We only ever see royals bending it. Meanwhile in Korra's age, they have power plants where every average-Joe can bend it. The bulk of the theory revolves around the idea that once Zuko took the throne, he actually followed the public mission statement of the war and actually shared their knowledge with everybody - including lightning-bending.
In atla lightning bending was rare, but in Korra we see many many people able to lightning bend, to the point where they have power plants that are powered by lightning benders
I think all this ability s are just tehnik s that need a lot of training and not ewery one are able to do it and that is more human thing than bender like some people can control there emotions to perfection and concrete on 100 things at once which
Is some thing you need for a lightning for exemple wile for others no way in hell i belive i would be best at air bending personaly and would suck at fire bending
tho youre right, ATLOK marginalized it , making it a common day to day stuff, and tho i'm with ATLAB I kind of agree with korra here. I have a feel reasons to belive that, the biggest one being royal family BS fire nation propaganda is a thing they're well know for spreading lies, also zuko was going through a crises thats why he couldn't learn it. that way a normal cityzen woudn't have access to a lightning bender teacher they also woud grow thinking they're incapable therefore not even trying
similar to boling and his block for metal bending he clearly could do it he just didn't belive in himself enough to try
also and bare in mind thats a (me thing) educated guess. dealing with positive and negative energy is exactly how fire benders can ignite air what would make creating lightning pretty much second nature
@@AKatz17 I wasnt even aware of that theory and thing exactly the same thing, its way too good of point to simply ignore
There's also the remains of Monk Gyatso to prove how powerful Air bending is. Yes they were pacifists but when they find Gyatso's body he is surrounded by so many fire nation soldiers. If he can kill that many fire nation soldiers before they finally managed to kill him... I'd say that's pretty damn powerful for a pacifist.
And they were super charged from suzens comit
Still Gyatso was a master wasn’t he? It wasn’t like a master v master fight.
@@ac1455 It might as well be a master vs 50 masters because of sozin's comet
@@Ghoulofidiocy2917 correction: a master vs a whole squadron of firebending masters which were also BUFFED by Sozin's commet
there is no reason to assume that the firebenders gyatso killed were masters, the series consistently shows that few benders have the potential to be masters of their elements. The avatar gang has been shown to continually to be able to deal with fire nation firebenders with ease and these are fire benders who have actually seen combat unlike the ones who killed Gyatso. All of the fire benders we see during Sozens comet were either Firebender imperial palace guards who are sure to be masters and fire nation royalty like Zuko, Iroh, Azula and Ozai who are sure to have had the best fire bending instructors money could buy. Finally there is Zhong Zhong who was previously a high ranking member of the firenation military who also could have had a proper instructor.
I think we the audience overhype the power of Sozins comment since every bender we see use it was incredibly strong before the comet
I agree. Air is the best, always knew that. Not only can you use the air to redirect other elements, air is everywhere and you can even pull it out of peoples bodies. So powerfull
Just a question, theoretically couldn’t earthbenders pull dust and sediments out of the air?
Yes but think of how hard sand bending is. It’s so much that you legit can’t see
They would need a lot of air. I think it would be better for them to find a way to thin out the dirt in the ground into dust and when the enemy breathes it in. They condense it and crush their lungs. Jeez got dark.
@@desadograisedrobot515 well this is just a theoretical but they can grab the iron from peoples blood and rip them to shreds with it or they can give their opponents brittle bones by ripping calcium out of their bones and just punching them once
@@timesphere5199 no. the amount of Iron in the body is in grams so not enough. same with calcium.
@@inquisitorthornside3p494 well there are about 4 grams of blood in an average human adult, so you can make a small bullet, lead it to the brain, and rip apart the brain, and based on them moving huge pieces of metal throughout the series at high speeds, they can definitely do a tiny bullet quickly
The writers definitely intentionally nerf some of the bending. Aang was only able to resist blood bending because of the avatar state. A blood bender is only stopped by another blood bender , the avatar, or plot armor.
Now that I think about it, it seems stupid that the avatar doesn't use other elements aside the main four, even in the avatar state.
@@voluspa4448 what do you mean
@@ndang707 Isn't the avatar able to use all the elements? And even if they where the main four at the start, wouldn't it take only one avatar, for example, with the ability to use healing for the next avatar to be able to learn healing?
@@voluspa4448 Korra used healing and learnt to metalbend.
@@sir_whocampsalot2876 Yeah, but Aang never used healing, if Korra using healing was a result of her being the avatar, then Aang would be able of using it too.
Although metalbending is basically an art of its own, I can't say it is in the same level as healing, healing it's said to be a gift that some have, while metalbending just seems to be very hard to do because of the material and you need certain level of profiency in earthbending.
Edit: I searched a little more and got that lavabending was used by Roku and Szeto, both fire nation avatars using a sub-category of earthbending. So it's possible for the avatar to use every element, but for some reason Aang didn't want to learn healing.
As far as I can tell, there is only one "bending" technique that was not mentioned here, and that's Chi blocking. A technique that while not technically a "bending" technique, is still very powerful. If a chi blocker can get a hit on you, then you've already lost movement in at least one of your extremities, and it is learnable by anyone. Definitely A tier or possibly S tier given the right circumstances.
chi blocking is a sticking one as it has the same issues as "energy bending" i.e you have to be up close and even though the "chi blockers" were good, it seems more down to benders underestimating their opponents, allowing them to get that close. My theory on this is only based on the fact that at large bending is range/mid range powers
@@shaddass9993 On top of that, the bender fighting the chi blocker would also need their chi points exposed. Simple leather armor is enough to soften a jab or punch into uselessness. They're only getting through cloth and that is about it. It does have it's place and is useful if applied right, but you also have to be as agile, quick, dexterous as Aang or Tai Li to really even consider it
That has nothing to do with the elements
Glass-Bending, Dust-Stepping, Mist-Stepping, Jet-Stepping weren't mentioned either
@@greenman2970 I would put glass bending a weaker Ice bending.its hard to cut people, but still quite fragile
“Lightning bending takes like 40 minutes” *shows clip of ozai using lightning bending within a second*
There is evidence that with enough training, any water bender can blood bend. Taking and his sons are prime examples. Yakone and Amon were also able to blood bend with their minds without a full moon
no yakone and amon and HIS BROTHER was special it was heavily implied that
The "which is it, korra??" when talking about lightning bending is pretty easily explained, I think.
You can either shoot out a quick shot of lightning whenever; still hurts. Or, you take time to charge it up and make it more lethal/deadlier.
That's how I saw it, at least.
I agree, the longer you charge it the more powerful.
@@rayanvij3457 except you are Ozai, charge it instantly and still make it lethal. His lightning is S Tier for me
That doesn’t seem consistent either, Mako kills someone by just throwing a hand out and just firing a bolt. A bolt that took 3 movements incapacitated an Amon activist. Like 5 firebenders can power the city grid by just shooting at shit without any windup.
@@phoebusapollo8365 If you're talking about Mako killing Ming-Hua, she died because he electrocuted the water. The water helped make the current stronger or however the science behind htat works lol
I don't know which bolt you're referring to in the second sentence, my bad.
And I doubt it's only those 5 benders powering the whole city lol
@@TechnoPup water conducts electricity, it doesn’t make it stronger. The second bolt was during a car chase with the Amon Activists. “No prep just throw the bolt” to kill Ming-Hua, and multiple movements to incapacitate another person. And even if there were more than 5 benders powering the city’s it makes no sense for them to use weaker lightning when it would be so much more efficient to have less people putting more power into the city’s grid.
And that’s not even mentioning the fact that it makes no sense for lighting generation to be that quick. It’s not just firebending where you harness breath and chi to just make fire come out, there’s a whole inner ritual of separating positive and negative energies, and I’m sorry, just throwing your hand out and shooting a lightning bolt like regular firebending is not enough for you to separate the energies. Even Ozai, arguably the most proficient and powerful firebender in the show moves both his arms in a circle before firing it.
The circumstances you gave for the 4 main styles is... oddly specific. yeah, in the middle of the air the earth bender has a disadvantage. you might find it odd that humans live mostly ON THE GROUND. They are literally NEVER without material access unless they're in the arctic.
Even then there’s still the earth crust beneath snow
Planes and blimps are a thing in the universe so there are air battles now
there ARE several instances in the show where earthbenders are left withought earth to bend, purposley. in world, scenarios and precautions have been engineered to take away someones ability to earthbend/fight back/escape imprisonment. before metalbending, at least. and it took heavy evolution in world for many earthbenders to be able to commonly metal bend, and even THEN, they could only bend metal with impurities, last i checked. someone will have to fact check me on that, i havent watched much the legend of korra.
@@Wyrm7774 imagine all the debris earthbenders can lauch at them planes
@@Ashgrey0 yes but we're talking about them being on a plane or blimp specifically since the original comment was how they would "never be without material access"
I think this intro is the best I've ever heard. With comments like "you're not going to find that level of maturity on this show", "nah nah nah, we're going like 4th-year playground rules, someone has always has to be able to kick somebody else's ass", and lastly "what's the point of having a well-detailed magic system if you can't debate which 12 year old will win a fight".
I also love the comment at the end "this video is going to piss you off, but wouldn't you rather be pissed off than bored"
This video is a masterpiece, keep up the good work.
Thank you so much!!! Feel free to suggest topics for future videos
"You're not going to find that level of maturity on this page."
Thank you, Danny, for the concise mission statement of your channel. 🤣
Id imagine lightning bending gets stronger the longer it takes since people have launched it easily and fast but i imagine more power the more you buildup
It’s a good point but read my comment I just posted. It’ll explain it a little bit for you
I think it also depends on their mastery of it as the lightning Ozai shot at Zuko was extremely large and seemed extremely powerful, you could feel the impact when it hit Zuko( even though he redirected it) and he charged it up in like, around 1 second from what I remeber
Remember
Iroh says this when he teaches zuko. The longer you keep the chi apart, the most power happens when you let them crash together again
Yeah, that makes sense. Mako can do it almost instantly 99% of the time, but he did the long version to dismantle Kuvira's weapon.
I just realized this: technically humans have minerals inside them and their bones. Would this mean earthbenders could theoretically “bonebend”?
It's the same way that we are breathing Air, that means airbender could fill up lungs and then Pooh they Explode.
And also waterbender, our body is basically filled with water, imagine if you freze it inside the body and then boom, you exploded before you could even blink.
Your nervous system is full of electricity. Can firebenders mindbend?
Technically... no. Toph explains in the TLA what she does to 'bend' the metal. What everyone sees as 'metal bending' is just a focused bending of the impurities that are in the metal (which are tiny bits of earth). So she makes pressure using these impurities to 'bend' the metal.
It's similar to the illusion of the 'earth bending' that makes Aang using air bending to elevate a boulder in one episode or when he plays with 3 little stones in his hands; he just bend the air around to move the rocks but didn´t use earth bending at those points.
It's actually theorized that Toph used bonebending to move Sokka out of the way a few times, because the ground beneath him wasn't animated to move in those situations. And if I remember correctly there actually was a bonebender, who managed to grow bone spikes out of his body and stuff like that in a comic. At least I've seen a yt video about that
There are theories on this, and I have, in fact, had nightmares about them
I'd love to see an R-rated Avatar series, but with a few caveats as to not make everyone just one-hit each other. Full freedom to do the most brutal things like taking the air out of lungs, blood/bone bending etc. However, my caveats would be that the characters could, through hardship, protect their bodies, but only the volume of their own from any bending. Call it inner chi or whatever. So a master whatever-bender could just demolish NPCs, but would have to properly battle those who have mastered their respective bending styles. My hope for the series would be to eliminate any questions of ''Why didn't they just...?*
But then go all out The Boys(Amazon series) on the whole concept.
Tbf P'li is also confirmed to be able to use standard Fire Bending, and she's pretty sick with it given that she avoided getting roasted by Zuko's DRAGON. So it's not like it's incompatible with standard Fire Bending for defense or close quarters. (Not that Fire is the best for either of those, that's Earth and Air respectively. But it's still a thing).
I mean yeah but he was just talking about the sub bending by itself without the actual fire bending the same way he said he’d rank flight at S tier when combined with air bending
@@bleachkid44 ik, but in specific regards to Combustion Bending that wasn't mentioned. With every other sub bending, he at least made mention of how it synergizes with the main style, but due to CB's usage in both Aang and Korra, we rarely see that synergy applied.
Wait, she avoided getting roasted alive by a dragon using firebending?
@@furiousbunerstone8538 yeah during her initial breakout. It's when she says "I've waited fifteen years to feel this warm" and then tried to murder said dragon.
It also doesn't seem like they can make fire anymore. We only ever see both p'li and combustion man manipulate fire shot at them in order to dissipate it. I think instead of being able to bend fire out of the arms, legs, and mouth they focus all of those into their forehead opening the corresponding chakra and all of their firepower from the 5 main places fire leaves the body is combined into that one spot resulting in a powerful concussive blast
Spirit Projection is nearly unstoppable scrying, it's the perfect way to scout on your enemy without any downsides aside from possibly being vulnerable to someone finding your material form, at which point you should've found a better place to hide or had competent allies.
I am like 99% sure the actual characters in the show can't see the airbending the way we do. Because in that one episode with Haru in season 1 Katara pretends to earthbend by having Aang blow air at a boulder to make it look like she's bending it. So they can't see the air otherwise they wouldn't have been fooled.
the air cannon Aang created in an episode where he did NOT have earthbending yet would suggest otherwise tho, bc Sokka and Katara could ¨see¨ where to put the rocks so they would be shot out. i agree with you, just dont see why they would give us 2 examples
In the same episode thou they have the coal cannon thing. I have no idea what to believe
Personally I favor Earth bending over fire bending, it's the least flexible of the 4, and Earth bending has far superior subforms. Sure fire bending good at killing someone but so is a pebble through the skull, and that's faster than a flaming punch
"have you ever been hurt by a plant leaf"
Every plant in Australia: allow us to introduce ourselves
I agree with almost everything, except for two things:
1. Lightning bending is not slow at all. In The Last Airbender, lightning bending was only at its infancy, which is why it took so long for Iroh and Azula to charge it. Like Iroh said, it takes a very clear mind to control it, so I’d assume they took a longer time to generate the lightning step by step, to maintain that control and not lose their lives in the process. But even then we see Ozai generate lightning in about a second and with barely any movement, just one big swing really. Additionally, we also see Azula going insane during the episode of the Last Agni Kai, and despite not having a clear mind at all, she can still generate it, albeit less precise. It just goes to show that lightning was more than just an incredibly rare and almost-impossible skill, with enough training and discoveries you can generate it much easier. And overtime, that’s exactly what happens. Like we see in The Legend of Korra, lightning bending has been developed highly so that anyone can generate it really quickly. Just look how Mako generated lightning in a split second with barely any movement, while being bloodbent by Amon out of all people. iirc in the comics (but correct me if I’m wrong here), lightning also ended up having more uses than just lightning bolts too, making it even more OP. It’s arguably borderline S-tier, but the only thing holding it back to A imo is the suicide potential. However, I’d say that especially after the high development it went through, this is a way smaller problem in comparison to combustion bending. I’d say a high A ranking is still fair though, so I don’t disagree with your placement, only a bit of the reasoning.
2. Earthbending is less prone to the environment problem than waterbending. Unless you’re surrounded by one of the arctics, a big water body (ocean/sea/lake) or a river, how much can you use it honestly? Yes you can carry a water bag but such a low amount of water holds back a waterbender a lot imo, it’s just relatively small water swings. Most waterbenders also don’t know that you can get water out of plants (or even thin air) in the first place, as even a waterbending master like Katara didn’t know until Hama told her. Earth on the other hand is far more prevalent for humans, as we stand and live on the ground. The planet is only 30% land but that’s where 95% of the action happens. The fight between Korra and Tarrlok in season one shows this the most imo. He was an incredible water bender and could battle Korra really well, because behind him he had a fountain with a lot of water. But once that was gone? He was totally fucked and powerless, and the only reason he got away was because he resorted to non-full moon bloodbending, which we all know is the most OP thing a non-Avatar can do. I’d still say earthbending is the “weakest” of the four though, mostly because I believe that in a longer fight, it is easily the most exhausting element to bend. Imo this is also the reason why the Earth Kingdom could not defend themselves against the Fire Nation during the war, and warfare as we know is usually a long process. Utility wise it’s definitely the best, so that’s what balances it really well for me. It’s the most versatile element on paper.
I agree wich you on everything you said especially on the lightning thing, it can so deadly but people are underratting it
ik im a whole year late but the earth nation struggling to defend themselves was less about there bending and more about the corruption in ba sing sei and the fact that firebenders had more advanced technology and since it was made of metal the earth benders couldnt bend it
Agreed except earth bending is broken it's nerfed because the show is PG in a real fight one git from a rock would cave in skulls crack bones and shred flesh only a very skilled air bender could survive. Also anyone with a strong tactical mind can steamroll most enemies with earth bending if you can seismic sense you can go underground in a littlw cave and a few air holes surronf yourself with walls and earth bend the.whoel fight from there or pop out of the ground anywhere to attack this alone counters a blood bender if they can tell where under the ground you are but you can see them clearly and if you are deep enough not even a combustion bender is digging you out. Earth bending is easily the best followed by air.
I actually respect your rankings and like the reason behind it. Now I know why the Air nomads are so passive, it’s because they’re OVERPOWERED 😱😱😱
Yeah just imagine u master taking out people oxygen
I actually think waterbending, even by itself, is the most powerful. Have you SEEN what water at a high enough pressure can do? Water in nature is pretty relentless with time. If a waterbender can control that "time" (aka increase pressure) then it's pretty hard to stop.
Have you ever seen what air can do? Do you remember how the water gets that fast? Pressure. Airbenders could easily bend all four elements, simply by manipulating the air around them, and they could do it better than the actual benders if masters. Imagine an Airbender using air to grab a ball of water, squeeze it with the air and just use the pressure cutter anyway.
People forget that it’s a kids show. When it’s not being used on people water cuts steel and evicerates rock. Hama shreds a massive boulder into 4 slices in a second
Yeah, though I think Water alone is outclassed by Air. Water bender starts to bend the water and then is immediately stopped as the air is sucked out of their lungs. Alternatively, bending the air within someone and instantly exploding the lungs/organs within would also suck... Not to mention, Air can also be pressurized to easily go through people. IMO, Air outclasses Water until you bring in Blood Bending.
@@olorin6494 People don't forget, people are simply speculating and talking about the TRUE lethal ramifications of the bending if it *wasn't* a kid's show.
@@revenge3265 To be honest, you can also fill the opponent's lugs with water, drowning them in the process. Both Air and Water are very lethal.
16:11 "if you put all four benders in this highly specific situation designed to screw of earth then its the worst" when i could say put all four in a bunker deep underground made of stone then its the best
Flameo hotman!
Okay, with that out of the way - I wholeheartedly agree with this ranking. My only issue comes not from you, but from the mechanics. Water/Ice and Lava/Earth is just phase-shifting liquid to solid and back again; I've always had a problem with the idea that waterbenders can phase-shift almost at will while lavabending is so damn rare that we only know two people that can do it. I know it's because the creators knew it was OP, but that always irked me a bit.
Probably related to the sheer amount of energy it takes to phase shift rock, as compared to water. And the fact that in freezing water to ice you're removing energy, while in melting rock you're supplying energy. I headcanon that to use lavabending you need Big Stonkin Reserves of energy, more so than a water bender needs to be an ice bender.
Ive always thought precisely the same. You notice we never see water benders turn water to steam? They probably pull energy from water to freeze it then return that same energy back to it
Water is more connected with change and the flowing, earth bending is known as the solid, sturdy one. Just by nature it makes sense that water benders could shift it easier than earth benders cus its kinda their thing.
I'd argue that bending has a lot to do with mentality and attitude as seen with the avatars. Aang was flighty and non-confrontational so struggled with earth bending while Korra was aggressive and struggled with air. I think it'd be difficult for an earth bender whose discipline required steadiness and solidity to think in the fluid mindset that phase shifting would probably require.
@@michaelu3055 that's what I was thinking also, how many Earthbenders are agile and flighty. Also i think it has to do with being able to imagine doing it. Toph had to train Aang into imagining himself as a rock to understand earthbending. How often do you think people see lava and such, while people constantly see ice turn into water and vice versa. And really the only people that see Lava are firebenders and like us the people of the world probably thought it was a subclass of fire, so earthbenders never really tried.
Ming Hua could defeat a bloodbender. I noticed that she is one of the few who can move water without using bending forms. So if she was ever being blood bended, she can slice through whoever was doing it without moving. Her arms move independent of her body, so she can move water when she herself can't move. Above that she is a VERY aggressive water bender, she will slice clean through people in an instant.
I always loved how high velocity her style was.
She uses her hips back and leg muscles. She's not psychic
@@andrewbaek6691 Nope, when she carries P'Li out of her prison her arms move independently while her body does normal climbing.
When she climbs herself out of prison her arms move while her body is motionless.
When she stands and does nothing her arms are still being controlled and maintained. She can move her water arms completely independent of her body.
We have seen her use her arms while her body is busy and when her body is completely still.
Final Agni Kai is probably the best fight scene in any show or movie. The music, the emotion, the blue and orange fire, nothing can beat it
I love the vid man, and thanks for making it! Though if you'd like to read, my list is a little different: it would be like Airbending, Earthbending, Waterbending, Firebending if you're talking who beats who in a 1v1 or free-for-all fight like the cabin example.
-Airbending is hands down the strongest 1v1 fight element, just choke em out and outrun their newfound life timer (which you have the best movement options of all time so that's a free win). Oh also, air is invisible - otherwise The Boulder and Xin Fu would've known Aang airbended instead of thinking Toph took a dive for the prize money, making it even more dangerous as the enemy would lose half of whatever time they had just realizing you were doing this. And this strategy doesn't take into account wind temperature, debris, wind speed, tornadoes, aerial juggling (launching you into the air and air-punching you until they get bored) any of the other actual offensive or evasive capabilities of Airbending, so...
-Earthbending only takes one or two well-placed sharp pebbles to kill someone with (think of a bullet) and anything more just gives you the defensive power of god, on top of having the utility of being able to build almost anything you want out of stone in an instant. Oh also, because you can levitate the earth, you could theoretically do this while you're standing on it soooooo flight boots! :D (see Book One Episode 6, Imprisoned - if an Earthbender can make a coal platform float with people on it, they could theoretically float on it too)
-Waterbending takes a more supportive role despite its bullet-like offensive capabilities (the rain scene from book 3), but the support it offers ranges from bootleg earthbender to "frick you I am you I control you" to "instant field medic, just add water". Not great at any particular thing, but being decent at everything with a free healing ability is really nice in every situation, even if the healing isn't bringing you back from the dead without Spirit Water. Sadly, they don't have a suffocation trick like Airbenders, because water is visible and can be stopped by every element (Fire via steam, Earth via wall, Water via freeze, and Air via blowing it all away on sight)
-Firebenders are the strongest crowd controllers of the bunch with good area damage, flight jets, and a free one-shot button on key targets provided they're distracted (lightning), as well as the theoretical ability to cauterize wounds if you were careful, but everyone has some cheesy way they could give themselves flight and everyone else has better one-on-one damage for a negligible resource requirement, that's why you never see a lone firebender succeed in the show that isn't close to royalty, cause only they are adept enough to get away with it - whereas you can see Toph, Katara, Bolin, Korra, Amon, Tenzin, The Boulder, Bumi, and insert any other side benders hold their own when caught ON their own... if they aren't firebenders. If armies of these people fought, however, Firebenders would come out on top since the choke trick isn't possible on that large of a scale, bullets only deal with one or two targets at a time, and all of those tricks pale in comparison to fifteen huge flame jets that take all of them out at once... hence the whole point of the show.
Airbending would be SS, Earthbending falls between S and A depending on which extra flavor of bending you have (Lavabending being best of course), Waterbending is A, Firebending is B. On a seperate tier list of course, cause you can't compare the whole bending style to its smaller subcategories.
Also the "Slow lightning" Thing isnt really relevant, it actually just means these characters are faster than, or relevant too-the lightning's speed itself. Its not an anti-feat, but instead an actual feat of speed. It means the characters are fast, not that the lightning is slow. Power scaling 101
Nah, if the characters could move as fast as lightning then there would be no point to the show at all. The lightning being slower makes more sense however I think the show just makes it slow for entertainment
@@Clackerus The point to the show would remain intact. A speed feat dosent change this. Especially one from later in the shows course.
There's also different levels of speed feels. Just because a character can briefly brush relativisitically to lightning dosent mean they can maintain it.
Plus Gyatso nukes an entire room of firebenders. He probably did that almost instantly, since the firebenders would have used their comet powers to blow him to smithereens. If this is the amount of power airbending can have, just killing someone instantly, then it's scary.
Edit: Actually I just realized we don't know what Gyatso did to kill all those firebenders. But he definitely killed them all quickly, taking himself out also, so this must be a pretty powerful element
if u have to guess, he sucked out all the air, instantly killing all ppl in range but him, and also taking the oxygen away so the fire would not get to him
Even more gruesome possibility
Since Air/the atmosphere exerts pressure on our bodies, and lack of that pressure would cause our bodies to swell and hemorrhage right away, Gyatso could have bent all the air out of the room just long enough to cause a low pressure zone that killed all the firebenders, and himself, with grievous internal injuries from the swelling
All fire benders can lightning bend. . .I mean if redirection of lightning counts but Zuko proved that finding lightning when you want it isn’t very convenient. For earth benders 9/10 times your on earth and there’s a lot of it. For water benders sure you can take water from the air or your sweat but there won’t be about of it. I feel like waterhenders struggle a lot more than earthbenders in finding bending material
But look at how many people can lightning bend in Korra, it’s at the point where they have power plants solely powered by lightning benders. It’s either because the technique was new in aangs time or the technique was hidden from the public and only used by the nobles. But in between aangs time and Korea’s lightning bending had become commonplace.
@@shawnf5260ahhhh, I mean that makes sense. I just happen to be one of those avatar fans who pretends Korra doesn’t exist. I really tried to watch it but I never got into it so my knowledge of Korra stuff isn’t deep at all.
@@ruriva4931 that's fine. Korra.. was... different. I liked the first and last season but the rest kind of was bad.
I didn’t know I needed to see this. Your delivery is amazing.
With regards to lightning bending’s inconsistent tai chi charge time, I think that’s them increasing it’s potency, longer wind up equals higher voltage. Mako didn’t need the wind up since he was using the water as a conductor
i just wanna see an avatar that’s a master at not only the 4 elements but also all the sub elements. like imagine an avatar shooting off lightning bolts faster than Ozai, blood bending so smoothly it looks like the person being controlled is in charge, shaping metal into weapons and armor, making their own volcanoes wherever they want, and flying while doing all this.
Love the take, but I feel like airbending has a hinderance of the need for a spiritual connection. The monks lived the way they did partially because it helped them fuel the spiritual connection needed to effectively use their element. Even Zaheer lived "sage-like" once becoming a bender. I don't feel like any regular joe could effectively get powerful as an airbender without some sort of lifestyle change.
but thats due to the teachings of the monks all the way back to the lion turtle city days where the airbenders lived in harmony with the spirits around them. sure it probably helped them with thier bending prowess, but its more akin to focusing. i mean they are literally taking hold of the air around them and converting it in some form to move things, probably in a way so it wont just rip them apart or completely remove the air from an area so they and everyone else dont die instantly. the amount of focus airbenders would need to be able to not just one shot themself and everyone around is insane.
then past just having to focus real damn hard as not kill, we see in korra when airbending comes back people are just willy nilly doing it, like its second nature. boomy saved himself falling, the korra gang literally just followed rumors of airbenders from around the world to collect them all as to build a single body air group. tenzen probably knows the danger they could potentionally bring if unproperly trained, unlike water or earth where its like tremors of bending, its akin to fire to where its raw power from within when unleashed and when untrained, deadly as we see aang burn katara. or if its airbending being unleashed, 100 mile winds ripping your flesh from your bones, imagine the sound barrier breaks in front of your face? thats deadly. the pacifist teachings makes sense as to keep a calm mind and morally good compass as to not become gods among men flying around blasting things apart. sucking the air out of people who cross you. no you want the most deadly bending to be controlled by the calmest, nicest people possible.
but fire bending killed literally as many as they could and only 1 family in the whole world is around with generational airbending in them. 1. every single other airbender now might, might follow the good teachings of pasifism, but a majority are gonna be unhappy, war surviving people who have it within themselves to kill, and now the have the greatest bending element around. only way any other bender can win is to not let them train, as we see with zahir, it only takes no worldly connections to fucking fly, and all those beaten down orphans will have nothing left but revenge.
air is top tier, especially if you kill gyatso
Never thought of that! Great point
For how seismic sense detects elements other than Earth, the answer is simple. It works be feeling vibrations, and basically echolocating-- anything that makes a sound, or moves in a location where the ground can absorb those vibrations will show up on her radar. The more trained, the better the noticing gets, but it’s also why she couldn’t sense anything on sand.
The lighting bending depends on how fast it is and where it's coming from. Redirecting sky lighting maintains the same speed. They take long to charge so they can gather energy. All current is pretty fast like those EM currents in videos.
Fire is the weakest overall IMO, even though it's ironically the most rooted. Other than concentrated destructive bursts, Fire is overall outclassed in multiple ways by everything else.
Earth
Support - Better at supporting allies. Has the ability to combine strength to make walls become more sturdier, to bend larger, use their metal to catch people, use their metal to control their own mid air movement easier, can give an ally armor, the ability to forcefully move stationary weaponry via bending the ground beneath them, move enemies via metal/earth, and can move allies out of danger forcefully.
Defense - This is an obvious one for Earth as there is rock/metal armor, the ability to create walls, has overall more ranged and can move underground via making tunnels with bending.
Destructive capabilities - Overall, Fire wins UNTIL you bring in lavabending. Gazan quite literally took out an entire mountain on his own and practically turned it into a volcano. He also took down the Earth Kingdom's wall like nothing, something an entire army of the Fire Nation failed to do on their own. Fire will also struggle against anything fire resistant whilst Lava will either easily melt through it or sink the structure as the ground beneath will melt eventually away. And to bring it back to literally creating a Volcano, imagine a city being underneath... That city is the next Pompeii. Also, I'm terms of survivability, you can survive fire and even lighting, but you're done for if lava just splashes on you let alone if you get full on hit by it. I will say, Fire is better when it comes to concentrative destruction via Lightning and Combustion.
Utility - Fire has more personal utility if we're talking as if there's literally nothing nearby, but with technology and metal, Earth EASILY destroys this category. Robots, controllable metal armor, can control their movements far easier via metal, entire cities made of metal fo easily protect, seismic sense, etc. Also, it's arguable, but Toph may have been doing an unique spiritual Earth bending technique like Jinora's astral projection (she calls it a high level air bending move and literally imbues the air with her spiritual energy) when she connected to the spirit vines and probably utilized seismic sense, allowing her to literally "see" the entire world. Fire however does have a leg up on everything else in the fact that it doesn't have to rely on an established source of the element as they can simply create it, with the exception of Air as air is literally everywhere on the planet.
Dueling - Earth, particularly Metal, is probably the best when it comes to purely dueling, with the exception of Blood for obvious reasons. Kuvira shows this perfectly in how she utilizing her outfit to duel. Other than having unlimited resources, metal outclasses Fire, Lightning, and Combustion in a pure 1v1 environment IMO. Not to mention the pure speed someone can metal bend, far easier precision, metal armor, capable in literally every range, the ability to tell what people are going to do via detecting their movements via seismic sense (and hypothetically through the same technique that allows for lie detection), and to have an enemy's location at all times via seismic sense in the event the the environment obscures a lot. Lava also has an super fast instant kill move via Gazan's lava shuriken.
Healing - Fire wins as the only thing we see for healing is Toph being able to detect and remove metallic Poison.
(Ill do the others later, but I think Fire/Lightning/Combustion is just *overall* outclassed IMO.)
I agree that fire is outclassed in certain circumstances, such as defense and support, however fire bending could outclass any other bending type offensively, besides blood of course. You could devise a strategy to beat any other bender using fire/ lightning. You could probably do so with other bending types as well, but none of the strategies could be as quick or precise. All other bending types are telegraphed, besides air, which would be the bending type fire would struggle with the most in my opinion, but would eventually outclass.
@@tyleradams5156 Even that I don't agree. Every class has a counter offensively to Fire.
Air straight blocks Fire and you can just suffocate someone before they can pull off the very long casting time that is lightning or better yet dodge it with air, since lightning is rather slow in the show (or people are weirdly fast), and Combustion bending can be stopped with a slap of air to the face or putting an air bubble around their head.
Earth straight up blocks Fire, Metal is totally immune to fire as long they metal vender literally just sits still as their metal would just fly through the fire, lava can also create walls as well as hurl instantkill rock at people like Gazan does, and Lightning does counter Lava but the speed at which you can bend metal is insane as well as Earth benders can take advantage of the long cast time to make someone immobile while they do it (even if the terrain is very earthy, metal would be everywhere in a modern society). Combustion is the best bet, but we've seen what metal can do to an Combustion bender (and also a literal pebble).
Water has Bloodbending, that's literally just instant win. Water alone would probably lose to Fire unless the terrain has a LOT of Water but Water would definitely be able to counter Lightning. Combustion is also rather could depending on the terrain, but given enough water, you would probably be able to keep blocking shots with your ice and then send hundreds of ice darts at them though I think Combustion overall wins here.
So yeah, I think Fire is just outclassed when you factor everything it had to everything every other element has. Even when you go by specific sub classes, each class can counter most of what Fire can do but not vice versa. Fire is best up against novices, but I feel a competent master of any of the other elements would be able to outdo it other than Water *overall* until you bring in Blood. Fire is the most visually stunning, but without Sozen's comet, the Air Nomad's peaceful attitude, the Earth Kingdom's solitude, and the Water Bender's lack of military might, I don't think Fire Nation would have ever successfully taken over the world without all these conditions (Hell, they couldn't even take the Earth Kingdom for a hot minute. I also think the writers may have realized that and that's why Sozen's comet was created in the first place; to bring back balance. Same way I think Water Benders have the Full Moon, because their lack of resources and their bending being finite can be easily exploited).
dude WHERE ARE THE OTHERS?? I NEED THE OTHERS. this is just too well doneee
Just be versatile with fire and it’ll be much more than destructive blasts lol
fire is probably the most outclassed bending because the only time you would probably use it is to charge up something or in combat
I feel compelled to point out that firebenders can fly as well, since Jet-stepping seems to be the only Flying Opera Company Skill to have survived since Kyoshi and is the only one that is still taught
Well, i would call it flying, more like boosting upwards, as its more of a propulsion than straight up flying like air bending, it can give firebenders boosts up but not sustainable flight, more like a jet pack than flight.
I do have to respectfully disagree the use of a jetpack is a form of flight, it just isn't as elegant a method as Airbender, it's more like flight through brute force: same action, different method
You need to include the personality traits attached to each element into your considerations. This is a huge part of their bindings.
If you take into account the fact that fire benders are all about their passion and their desires, then you will see they are the ones most likely to do anything to win a fight if it's something they want to do. This also makes air bending a lot weaker, as air benders are often pacifism.
Ergo, fire is the most powerful. (Its literally been called the element of power, as well!)
Pacifist? You mean like Zaheer murdering people?
Bending has little to do with personality traits. It's the associated culture that promote some personality traits over other.
No, that is where you’re wrong. Being a pacifist doesn’t make you weaker, it just means you’re not likely to kill someone. 😂😂 Airbenders are the strongest element in the show, period. Why? Well they’re all spiritual. It’s been confirmed spiritually increases your ability to bend and be good at bending. Meaning airbenders are the strongest benders because of their strong spiritual connection, hence why all airbenders are benders.
The problem with tier lists, is that most ppl rank them only on or primarily on combat effectiveness.
Bending is versatile, it’s more than just combat.
-healing, energy and Spirit walking bending are S.
You can heal an entire platoon of mostly anything- illness to wounds.
With energy bending you can block one’s bending, you don’t even have to do the fighting ppl can do that for you.
Spirit walking is more of an intel bending. With that you can gather information from the physical and spiritual world of your enemies. And also possess them if you are highly skilled in it.
Support for the Airbending: Monk Gyatso went out fighting and took a whole troop of firebenders with him, pacifism without power isn't pacifism, etc etc
You convinced me with all of your rankings and I was pretty impressed. Until your earth bending take… No way earth bending is worse then water bending, what is a water bending going to do when a giant boulder is flying at their face.
well, we can see in the episode where Hama teaches Katara, that she takes the water from the flowers around her and cuts a rock with it. Also in the episode where Azula tries to break into Ba Sing Se Aang and Katara cut the metal inside with water bending.
@@artistemma9582 you’re point was so good that they didn’t respond
@@artistemma9582 in the human body there is roughly 4 grams of iron and in a 9 millimeter bullet there is about twice as many grams of mass, so that means that you can essentially make a small bullet that can rip through the human body within seconds, you can puncture the heart several times and shoot the iron into the brain causing fatal brain injuries, and as a plus you can do the same with the calcium in their bones
@@timesphere5199 yeah, good luck finding an earthbender capable of doing that.
@@falquicao8331 I mean ik it's unlikely but theoretically it would be cool
Loved the tier list. I'd like to think some water benders can just train their lungs and use a full sphere around them as protection. It would slow down everything and you can attack however you want.
I think the fact that the only Airbender in the series who isn;t a pacifist was also arguably the best villain in either show. Zaheer was a badass
"You'd rather have a video piss you off than bore you." You're goddamn right. You have my subscription, I hope to get pissed off more in the future.
Definitely the most accurate ranking I’ve seen. So glad you agree that lavabending is goated af
In my opinion this is how the main four are ranked
If they have no sub-bending:
1st: air
2nd: fire
3rd: earth
4th water
If the person has all sub-bending unlocked:
1st: still air
2nd: earth
3rd: water but its close to 2nd
4th: fire
Fun Fact we have seen Lava bending 3 times in ATLA. Bended once by a fire bender and the other 2 were avatars who's base element was fire. It was only in Korra that Lava bending became an earth bending ability, probably because they didn't actually have any sub bending style. (Air benders have spirit projection. Fire benders have Lightning and Combustion. and water benders have Ice bending and healing.) Metal bending isn't really a sub bending style its just earth bending in a specific way. Same with Sand, Mud, Swamp, and Blood Bending. What I like to define as a sub bending style is a form of bending that does not bend one of the four elements in any way.
basic circular chart of overlap would look like this:
earth --> lava --> fire --> heat/combustion/plasma?? --> air --> steam/clouds --> water --> mud/wet clay/muddy water--> earth
and I don't think this is that controversial It's weird that some benders can make their element solid, liquid, and gas while others can't. I'd argue that all probably could, even if it hasn't happened in either show. If they can change the molecular vibrational speed of elements at a whim then why couldn't air or fire benders be able to control the vibration of molecules (i.e Helium and Hydrogen in the air) so fast that they break apart from their bonds.
@@nickrise6958 you gotta remember that avatar doesnt account for science in any way when it comes to bending. It's less about atomic structure and more about symbolism and spirituality(or at least it tries to be. Korra started to get stuff wrong when they didnt rehire the head writer of ATLA while making Korra)
That's why water heals(a common superstition is about the healing properties of water/tea), fire bending can learn lightning bending(when lightning hits the earth it can create fires and therefore gets linked to it) etc etc.
It's the same reason why earth benders cant bend the carbon in people's flesh. And why firebenders cant create thermonuclear explosions etc
@@Lordgrayson While I agree with your take, you also have to remember that the show only takes you as far as the industrial revolution and even then its not about scientific advancement its based completely on bending power and what that allows them to do technology-wise. It's easy to imagine an in-world inventor/scientist looking into states of matter and bending in the interest of trying to create benders out of nonbenders.
Even if everything is spiritual and symbolic, elements would still likely be made up of atoms and molecules meaning that a scientific understanding of how their bending works (which there likely would be a scientific explanation in world on top of the magic element) would allow earth benders to realize their ability to bend the "earth" in humans (humans, humus, earth btw). Or for fire/air benders to superheat matter in the air.
I do disagree with the sentiment that just because we don't know if the magic system is or isn't grounded in science, doesn't mean we can't talk about the ramifications of if it is.
@@nickrise6958 Im not saying this is a lack of information, we know that the way the elements are bended is not based on scientific information.
The elements are bent as they are. Fire isnt heat its forms of fire. water isnt liquid its forms of water. earthbending isnt bending some combination of periodic elements, its bending the earth/rock. and airbending isnt bending oxygen and nitrogen, its bending air.
The argument for bending the elements in ways like flesh bending or airbenders making nitrogen bombs fails to take into account the fact that they arent bending atoms.
Otherwise how in the world would you explain energy bending which is the most spiritual and symbolic form of bending there is(until Legend of Korra came around and retconned it out of existence)
Excuse me... when do we see a firebender bend Lava?
Also, in ATLA we also see Kyoshi, base element Earth, do it when she creates the island. Then we see Szeto and Roku doing it. I'm missing the firebender doing it though.
Cool list and I mostly agree! One thing i always imagined which may not be true is that lava bending was a result of parents being a fire bender and an earth bender just like Bolin's parents were (As well as being super rare). And that it only came to light in Korra after nations were more unified and mixed nation relationships were more common rather than it just being a super rare earthbending technique.
Also with the final tier list I still think water is most powerful. They theoretically could just freeze someones blood without the need of bloodbending or having to carry around water.
My favourite bending is fire, most offensive capabilities, ability to warm yourself whether you are in artic or cold cooler in a prison. Lightning redirection, ability to do spinning kicks inspired by Airbenders, katara water push, up and down on zuko with fire. Dragon breath by drinking tea. Creating lightning. Creating fire tentacles, shooting fire that looks like a dragon, melting metal with fire, conquering other nations, discovering industrialising their nation, going to see ember island plays, having the ability to summon sparky sparky boom man, having a chance in being sparky sparky boom man, having the ability to kill or tame dragons, having the ability to fight other firebenders with agni kai. Burn a kids face and sacre him for the rest of his life and watch him have a redemption arc and redirecting lightning shot by you and then going to help the avatar and have a duel with his extremely talented sister also watch him bond with his uncle who is the best uncle in all if fiction. Also see him arrest his uncle and see hsi uncle get himself rip and then they meet again and hug and cry
Alright,
I agree with a lot of this... in the context of a 1v1/4v4 free for all.
However, thinking in a larger scale, like a war for example, the rankings are really off tbh.
Healing and astral projection in a war would be absolutely bonkers. Like, if a single air nomad had astral projection it would allow them to know the imminent plans of attack that Sozin would've been doing during the comet and given the air nomads days to plan an escape.
Healing is absolutely nuts in terms of large scale combat.
If someone takes an arrow to the knee, they're done adventuring right then and there. But with healing being able to at the very minimum rapidly decrease the time it takes to heal from a wound, a once useless soldier goes right back to peak performance in a day at a maximum. Like, the water tribes could rebound right back from 10 viable warriors to 1000 in a matter of days with healing.
The only thing I DO NOT agree with is the following;
Swamp benders can bend plants as is shown in the show, and while that may seem very niche on the surface, wait until you hear about poisonous plants, or just thorny plants in general. Like, getting hit with a flying 63 foot cacti (yes they're a thing) would already suck to, let alone a fan of poison ivy leaves to the face.
And like.., poison ivy aint got shit on stuff like the manchineel tree which is basically made to personally screw over whomever dares look at it funny, or the very tastefully named Suic'de plant, a plant that got it's name from a tale where someone personally airdropped themselves to the pearly gates after using it to wipe their back end after nature called. And these are real world plants, Imagine would could exist in a world where fusions of animals, and EVEN PLANTS just exist (as shown in a very VERY specific episode; th-cam.com/video/3WsTtFaoHN0/w-d-xo.html ).
Your calling swamp benders F tier, but what you gunna do when they roll up with a walking army of Suic'de manchineel tree's all being controlled without the full moon.
Also if you think plants are a 'hard to find' resource, clearly you don't get out much, cuz I can touch grass by walking right out my front door.
I think f tier is understandable as it would be so much more useful in so many situations to just waterbend the water out of the plant rather than usi ng the plant itself, sure there's grass everywhere but is that gonna hurt anyone
THANK YOU, was thinking exactly the same. This guy probably never did any gardening :p
Not to mention that given enough skill you might be able to make reusable armor out of a lot of plants. Even grass to a certain degree. Or at least long thin weeds. Some might think I'm joking but I'm serious about making grass or weed armor. Remember that many grasses and weeds by extension are made of fiber. You know that long stringy stuff you have to peel off of corn underneath the leaves. Just twist enough of those fibers and you can make rope. And you can make armor by doing specific weaves with fiber to make a strong, flexible textile armor. Heck, Mythbusters from years ago made japanese PAPER armor! (If memory serves me correctly it was by no means the best armor compared to heat treated metal and it was only a few pounds shy from typically weighted metal armor but still it was better than no armor at all.) And being able to repair your armor on the move would be invaluable in a large army! Do I think overall that swampbending is worse than many others in terms of combat? Definitely. But if you want to become a walking tank that can sponge attacks for your friends just as Swamp guy showed during the invasion, I would put Swampbending in B tier at least. Looking at Seismic sense having absolutely no ability to attack at all while swampbending CAN to a CERTAIN degree, I would argue that Swampbending is better than Seismic sense.
I agree Swamp benders are one of those sub bending that I want to see expanded upon, theoretically it’s not just swamp although it’s an the area they could thrive in the most, they can use any really any plant since most of its water and plants are very varied and a team of plant benders can do a lot more
And don't forget the following: If you crash a car (metal box) on a tree, it's usually not the tree that breaks.
"the odds of a firebender finding themselves in the arctic are like pretty slim" meanwhile zuko and iro in episode 1 "are we chopped liver?" (although to be fair that was the antarctic , we had to wai until the end of the first season to see THOUSANDS of fire bender in the arctic XD)
we see in the kyoshi novels white fire bending, which literally melts earth in seconds
Only a few minutes in and already love your take on combustion bending. Also was wondering during the show why nobody thought to choke Kovira out with her own collar.
One reason air bending is so OP is due to the simple fact that it can’t really be restricted like the other three bending styles. To illustrate this point, let’s look at the Red Lotus. Ming Hua, a water bender, was imprisoned in a volcano, the heat removing almost any excess water she could use to escape. Ghazan, an earth bender, was held far out at sea in a wooden boat, eliminating any access to earth. P’Li, a fire bender, was held deep beneath a tundra in the South Pole, the extreme cold preventing her from fire bending. But even if Zaheer didn’t have the element of surprise with his use of air bending to escape, air can’t be restricted in the same way as the other three disciplines as it is everywhere. Earth can be purified past a bendable state, heat can be lowered to near absolute zero and water can be all but constantly evaporated in a suitably hot environment. But not air.
I imagine with the air, you likely can see it. Like how when your grilling stuff, the air looks funny above the grill, sorta like that. I don't know the scientific term but I believe it's the change in the air that makes it visible. Now you may ask "What about when there's wind". You're telling me that the air that a air bender manipulates is going to apply the same amount of force that a light breeze will?
When there hurricane winds you don’t see the winds
The grill looks different because of steam, aka little drops of water that warp the light.
@@stafastacks1760 but u see the things that it’s affecting
same concept applies, the opponents would see the dirt and debris. not to mention most air bending is concentrated columns and plumes of air and not usually just giant all encompassing hurricane winds
that’s why enemies are always dodging or blocking airbender attacks, because they’re visible
It’s visual for us the audience to see. In the verse they can’t see it [the enemy]
@@Sennodev i disagree attacks from airbenders seem to be dodge and blocked, even if you do read the benders movements you still wouldn't be able to dodge an attack you can't see since you dont know the range or magnitude of the attack that's kinda been extinct for 100 years
Blood bending is the most messed up of all. In ATLA the moon rule was created cause manipulatig blood pretty much means bending not only the water in It but also the chi of that person so it's like water and energy bending combined, so it's only natural that a water bender needs extra energy from the moon spirit to achieve that. But then in Korra that rule was rewrited ( for amon's family ONLY though) without any reason and that generated lots of confusion in the worldbuilding. I love TLOK but It has enormous plot holes conversely ATLA was simply perfect in these regards.
this is 100% spot on EXCEPT that gripe you got with lightning bending. I mean its really not that bad of a charge time you're looking at 4-5 sec beginner and 1-2 sec adept. against any other bending if you put a small distance between you and your opponent you should be able to get shots off. and if this wasn't PG-13 world anybody who even gets grazed by lightning is donzo
I don't see why people consider bloodbending to be the definitive strongest subskill. Every bending type has their "win condition bending type" Lava, Combustion, Blood and... Vacuums.
For Vacuums there haven't canonically been a bunch of uses for it. Zaheer did it, but that was basic. Gyatso might've done it, but the only one that really did it was Yangchen, she used it when fighting combustion benders, removing all the air in a room completely negating their firebending and then making it rush back in essentially exploding their eardrums and lungs. It's a pretty dark type of bending that does canonically exist. We don't see it used a lot because it isn't very monk-like to do.
Lavabending is extremely lethal, just one splash can kill everyone and blocking it is very hard (idk what fire, air, ice or stone are really gonna do). You just have to overpower it with another stronger strike (like how an airbending can block a rock). The biggest flaw is that it is seemingly pretty slow.
Combustion has by far the longest range of any bending ability and just... instantly kills anyone. Combustion man nearly killed the entire gaang with a single blow TWICE being saved once by Toph using wallhacks and Zuko tarzanning his way into him. That's strong. Really strong. liberty benders are built stronger (the process of making someone a combustion bender is if I remember correctly extremely dangerous (using it when you can't kills you) and also physically demanding, every combustion bender we know (I think it's about six) is built like a tank). The ideal combustion bender just sneaks up on an enemy and kills them in their sleep, they can do this from many meters away. The catch, your chakra needs to be insanely well focussed to pull this off, if it aint, you're gonna kill yourself. This would also mean Combustion benders would also be pretty good lightning benders, since this also needs the supreme focus thing to work, but why use lightning when you give them some of that sweet sweet liberty. However, firebenders, if strong enough, can block most of a blow (which still throws them away but saves them from instantly dying)
Bloodbending is absolutely OP, but it has that one flaw that everyone forgets. It's limited to a full moon. It doesn't help that 60% of the bloodbenders we see didn't have this limit but the general consensus is that you still can't do it without a full moon. Then there's some other problems, if you're not extremely precise you can still get killed (like how Mako blitzed Amon, an expert bloodbender). Get's hard countered by any stronger waterbender or the avatar when they enter creative mode. It's range is also seemingly not incredibly long. Except for Yakone, bending multiple people simultaneously should also be pretty hard if they don't stand next to eachother. The way I see it, bloodbending gets more sluggish if you do it on multiple people Tarlok used it to knock some people out which isn't too hard (just make blood go down) the same goes for Yakone with some more precision because Yakone is a Waterbending god. Without Yakone & Co, bloodbending is pretty weak. Limited to just the full moon and overpowered by waterbending or just multiple people.
Spirit Projection: D
Don't get me wrong, it has its uses. But they amount to scouting and long distance communication. It has no combat applications, and isn't that interesting to look at.
Energy Bending: C
It's got more uses than Spirit Projection. It does what Ty Lee does to benders, but permanently. And if can reverse the loss of bending, even from Bloodbending-induced bending loss. It's also a huge visual spectacle (at least the first time Aang used it). Also, range isn't an issue considering the several amounts of times fights between benders have gone melee (namely Aang and Zuko fights, the one from the whole Tracking Girl episode in TLA Book 1 being a highlight).
Combustion: C
It's just shooting forehead lasers. It's too much of a one trick pony, and the 2 people with it have accidentally killed themselves. Not to mention how easy it is to debilitate a Combustion user.
Metalbending: B
Not that good in the TLA world where metal isn't that prevalent outside the Fire Nation. Much more usable in the Korra era, where it also got a huge glow up due to Toph refining it and teaching it to people. Even still, the fact that you can't really come across metal as easily as earth or even water, with the alternative being to come strapped with your own metal at the risk of another metalbending turning that against you puts it at middle tier.
Healing: D
Again, useful. But it's not that interesting to look at and isn't combat usable.
Mudbending: C
It's just dirty water/earth bending. Nothing special about it other than 2 of the 4 bending styles can use it.
Swampbending: C
More of a proof of concept how far Waterbending can go in regards to using water in stuff to manipulate the thing it's in. Otherwise, really niche, and really weak.
Sandbending: B
Deserts are a thing as are beaches. Way less niche than Swampbending, and way more useful. Also, it's just smaller earth in large collections. I don't see why you couldn't grind up Earth to turn it into "grains" to "Sandbend" with it for the added versatility the different bendable grants.
Lavabending: S
It's busted. Only real negative I can say is that I think it suffers the same downside Fire tends to suffer in shows like this; Yeah, you can shoot fire, but rarely does it actually seriously burn people, and if it is, it's against something like robots or White Zetsu. Expendable units people don't care about.
Lightningbending: A
It's cool AF. Lightning Redirection isn't a problem since I think that's rare (Iroh, Zuko, and Aang are the only ones I can think of that can use it within the TV show), and you can always learn Redirection yourself to redirect your redirected Lightning (like Azula learned to do). The charge speed is also inconsistent. Iroh and Azula take forever to do it, yet Ozai managed to charged and fire a bolt at Zuko within like a second. And then Mako close-range zapped Hamon with no charge.
Flight: A
It's Flight. It's never not useful to have. Assuming that's all you have and no actual bending ability, it's still pretty damn good to have.
Bloodbending: SSS
Shit's busted, especially with Hamon, Tarloc, and their dad. Pray that was just a genetic thing with them and not something any Waterbender could do with enough training.
Icebending: C
Really good in the Arctic and Antarctic. Near unusable outside that. And it's not even that great without the ability to turn it into Water.
Seismic Sense: A
Good support skill that works well with Earthbending, and would still be helpful without Earthbending. At the very least, it's good for finding and tracking people.
Main Bending Styles (worst to best):
Fire: It's nice that it's usable at almost all times. But that's all it really has going for it. Water shuts it down, Earth is durable enough to effectively do the same in most cases, and Air, which Fire needs, can counter it as well. All Fire has going for it is usability. It's got AoE. Precision. Ranged Attacks. Melee Attacks (remember when Zuko made knives out of Fire). Speed. Power. It can do a lot of different things as far as offense is concerned, and since a lot of Firebending seems a lot more Martial Arts based with all the punches and kicks used for their attacks, a Firebender is probably the best fighter without their bending. Sub-Bending Styles only really grant a more lethal ranged attack. Nice, but pretty basic.
Water: Despite 70% of Earth being water, you're probably not going to be around massive bodies of water as often as you'd like. Thankfully, water is a versatile element. You can control plants with water in them or extract the water to just use that. You can freeze it for additional lethality and immobilization. And WHEN you've got a river, a lake, or an ocean backing you, you can control massive amounts of space with your offense while simultaneously defending. Not to mention changing water to a gas to obstruct vision and do who knows what with that vapor surrounding your opponents. Still, the relative rarity of this advantage state and the severe underpoweredness of the disadvantage state stops Waterbending from going above 3rd place. That and Bloodbending's potential being unknown. TLA only showed it being usable under a full moon, and the only Korra era Bloodbenders might've just been genetic prodigies. There's no evidence to support the idea that a regular Bloodbender like Katara could match Hamon's or even Tarloc's prowess with the art.
Earth: Conversely, you're probably going to be able to Earthbend in most cases given that most civilizations have loads of land around them. As long as you're not on a ship or plane, you can probably Earthbend. And Earthbending is a very good Style given the raw power and [ground] range, defense, and even some degree of stealth ability as well as construction uses it has. It kinda sucks that Metal and Lava aren't something all Earthbenders can do, but you're kind of a god if you can lavabend, and Metalbending is pretty handy so long as no pure metals are involved. And since Sandbending is something all Earthbenders can learn to do, the Water/Air Bending like style is a nice compliment to Earth's main abilities if you're in a place where Sand is an option (assuming you can't just create your own Grain Earth).
Air: Needs no explaining. It's got offense of the fast and focused to the strong and wide-ranged. It's got defense. It's got mobility and evasion out the rear. It's got impressive lethality. It's always usable (more so than Fire). It's got a good (admittedly unnecessary) Sub-Bending Style, and Spirit Projection has its uses. It does everything. Thank goodness the Fire Nation were the violent ones and not the Air Nomads. Because they'd have messed the world up.
No Waterbending is literally the best nothing counters it, it has the most everyday modern uses, and probably
be able to bend most liquids like soap, wax, some water based poison, and some acids.
@@1ts_7r1pp
You'll almost never have enough access to regular water let alone that kind of stuff to do the levels of damage Air, Fire, and Earth can do unless you're living in a very specific environment or just happen to be out on the ocean for whatever reason. Water is a super situational bending element hindered by environmental factors (barring hax like Hamon and his family). Air and Fire don't have that issue, and Earth doesn't suffer as much since we literally live on land and will very rarely NOT be on/near it.
@@espurrseyes42 you don't need to be in an environment like an ocean to do damage, as shown by Hama, and when Katara and Aang destroyed the fire nation drill. And even if you are in a desert, you can still use sweat, urine, saliva, etc.
@@1ts_7r1pp
Once again, you aren't going to have enough of that stuff to match the DPS the other elements can put out. Even in the case of Hama, she wouldn't have been able to do that without all the plantlife around to drain water out of. Bringing her up only backs up my point about how situational waterbending is. Outside of specific situations like this where you're in a water-heavy location, sweat, piss, and spit aren't going to be enough to win a real fight in the vast majority of cases.
Also, you say "destroyed the drill" as if it didn't take practically the whole episode and a ton of in-universe time on top of the combined efforts of 3 benders and bending styles to take down. It took a LONG time to SLOWLY cut through a single steel pillar in The Drill, even more time to do partially do the same for the rest (granting enough time for Azula and co. to figure out what was going on and start interfering), and this was all SETUP so Aang could destroy The Drill later by carving an X into the top of it, carving a stray boulder into a spike, and using a combination of air and earthbending technique to land the finishing blow that destroyed it. The Drill wasn't destroyed solely by waterbending, let alone by raw DPS, and it certainly wasn't quick and easy.
If anything, I'd sooner credit that W to earthbending, as not only was it earth that dealt the killing blow, but Toph's assist to Katara allowed them to clog up the pipe (aiding with the overall damage of the final blow), and the whole idea to destroy The Drill this way based on Toph's earthbending philosophy.
@@espurrseyes42 I do sea your point (pun intended) but I believe that not only in a modern world that there is water everywhere, but also that other than fighting water would be more useful in everyday life.
I think Avatar’s balancing system makes elements as strong or as weak as the story needs
Air benders are monks based on pacifism so the story needs them to be evasive. Since they rarely attack, they need to be powerful when they do.
Water benders bend one of the least immediately threatening elements so they need different sub bending areas. Water isn’t always abundant so they need to be able to pull water out of anywhere. When it is abundant in areas, it needs to be a slow bending style.
Earth bending is slow since it’s rarely never abundant. And since earth could easily crush someone, it needs to be more dodge-able. Also since it’s abundant, earth bending can’t pull earth out of things like human bodies. Korra nerfed metal bending as well so they could have robots.
Fire bending never burns people because if it did then it’d be a quick fight for anyone hit with a large fireball. Also fire is almost never naturally present so of course they need to conjure it. Lightening bending would be an instant kill if it was as fast as actual electricity.
It’s hard to say which is the best since the show never wants that to be obvious lol
They're like really thought out and delicately balanced
fire bending is part of why the film was awful, how did fire benders overpower anyone in that
firebending doesn't burn people? you realize zuko has a BURN scar right?
@@kevinplonergan Firebending is like one of those elements that you don't need to be at certain area to bend and plus as the guy stated if avatar wasn't a kid show people would be easily burned. The air nomads are pacifist so they were ambushed and killed and earthbenders probably got themselves in situations that put then at a disadvantage. Fire bending is the best on offensive abilities which can make explosions and usually comes at a fast speed. I think you underestimate firebending
@@endgame4613 Fire bending in the movie is awful in the show its great and powerful but in the movie its objectively the weakest, what happens if someone destroys your source of firebending
I feel that air bending does definitely have some defensive capabilities. They could literally just use a giant gust of air to blow the obstacles away from them. The can take air out of fire, making it extinguish as well.
The healing being in C is the biggest insult IMO, out of all the elements there is only one sub category that can heal, plus imagine the monopoly you could have over the entire pharmaceutical industry if you play your cards right
Danny: “The worst one out of the four is Earth bending”
Also Danny: *puts it in s tear*
Me: 😃😄😃
Nice use of emoji 🙂
Also nice profile pic 🦉🏠
@@hunterpowers2568 aw thank u! 😊
@@Luna_luz_11 you’re welcome 😁❤️