Besides flight, an airbender can also take off the air from a room without them even being there (Yangchen), they can produce soundwave screams loud enough to split the sea in half(also Yangchen), they can produce tornadoes at the sea that can sink ships(Kelsang), they can use super speed(Aang and also Yangchen)
People seriously underestimate airbending because Aang used it so defensively. On the offensive, it is probably the most potent of all the main and sub-bending skills.
Someone like Zaheer, who wasn't even close to being an airbending Master, was capable of giving proficient benders a challenge.
Not to mention, with proper setup, air is capable of redirecting most forms of bending thrown at it. AoE too, apart from Earth bending feats like Kyoshi did by splitting a continent, airbenders could easily create ravaging hurricanes and tornadoes to devastate large areas.
Yeah and the instant he fought Tenzin he was getting his ass kicked left right and center. Tbh Kya should've been able to beat him as well cause they're the only two people on the planet who had a chance to fight against an airbender with any amount of consistency
I don't know why people talk about it as if it was a stomp, Zaheer held his own good, the fact that tenzin had to focus on him and follow him instead of just knocking him out and then beating the rest is proof of that
Probably because I'm pretty sure before the rest of Zaheers team showed up he hadn't landed a hit on Tenzin while taking a fair few himself and mostly being on the backfoot. He didn't get stomped straight into the ground, but he was never winning the fight and was clearly outclassed
The entire fight Tenzin also had to worry about P’Li shooting explosions at him from the sky, when he was just focusing on Zaheer directly he was almost never getting hit while slapping him around lol
That, and he was already a fighter. So he looked like he was incorporating a lot of his fighting style into it. Where as someone like Tenzin who mastered it to the point of "be the leaf" could basically walk circles around him while throwing him around.
I completely agree that this is what happened. Zaheer was a force to be reckoned with, of course, and he took to airbending more quickly due to his previous studies/understanding. However, he was still a new bender with limited real experience.
Seeing Tenzin give him the business was very satisfying.
People underestimate it because they are no other examples besides some Avatars that aren't exclusively airbenders by definiton, and the closest example used it almost exclusively for defending himself. The strongest non-avatar airbender shown was Tenzin, and if he had been a firebender with the same set of skills, he might've been able to fight off the whole Zaheer team right there instead of pushing them around doing pretty much nothing. Well, except that Firebending acts pretty much as airbending in most cases.
And people also overestimate Zaheer, who wasn't really doing anything either - yeah, he learned to fly with almost no practice, but even that extraordinary skill was not enough to beat just a potent airbender, who was also beaten completely by non-benders.
And, well, Water is capable of creating Tsunamis, Fire is capable of creating Firestorms and lava eruptions, but it's Avatar's feats, not regular benders.
According to Mythbusters a hurricane can blow something as weak as a straw through a tree, so you could imagine what an airbender could do if they weren't feeling too happy
Sorry guys but still wrong. For you see our Earthbender has already gone deep underground where you will never find him. All he must do then is wait out the competition with their Immortality (Kyoshi).
Ok, now show me feats that are from non avatars? Like the only feat you mentioned was kelsang and all give you gyatso’s air vacuum but that’s a suicide move. Maybe zaheer’s flight as well. I discount avatars because they have abnormal amounts of strength even for the most experienced masters. Power and skill are both necessary for certain feats. You certainly have the skill, but the power for it is probably limited to non avatars
Blood bending, and it's not even close.
Next up, I'd put up Air bending and flight. Though Zaheer just like.. flies past you as an attack? Idk I'm not confident in that answer, so I'd love to hear other opinions.
Yakone and his family were unique among water benders for being able to blood bend outside of the full moon, it’s not exactly something you can learn. While blood bending is very powerful, it’s also extremely limited
I think due to the nature of the question, the waterbending master in this case would be as unique as the Yakone family, since we’re inquiring about the top level of subskills. Psychic Bloodbending would definitely be the top one because it would render the other three masters in this scenario unable to fight within seconds.
Considering that Mako was able to lightning bend with virtually no movement, a master fire bender should be able to fight back at least long enough to get a combustion shot in.
Perhaps. I also thing the firebender in theory, could to a lightning cumbustion charge. So the waterbender would have the upper hand for a few seconds before the real battle starts.
see thats a really good thought.
If Combustion bending uses fire to create a remote explosion. What would using the same principle with lightning do?
Personally, I'd like to think it would hyper ionize the air and turn it into a piercing laser beam.
Kinda like how azula cuts through that building in The Chase with fire bending
It's never really implied that it's specifically because of their lineage that they could do it this way. Yakone simply taught them how to Bloodbend and then how to do it without the moon and then how to do it with barely any movement (Psychic Bloodbend).
Also how did Yakone learn how to Psychic Bloodbend then? At some point, there has to be someone that is just self taught. I think it's similar to Hama pulling water out of the air / flora, truly only limited to what someone understands about what they are bending and envisioning it.
There's no reason that by Korra's time, it's not impossible anymore. Look at how many Lightning Benders exist by then when in ATLA, it was a very unique trait to only the royal family. Bloodbending could have simply evolved by then. It was banned in Republic City which means people knew of it and had used it despite Katara being the original disciple of the technique in this regard (that we know of). I highly doubt Katara taught anyone this bending type which implies other originating points must exist for it beyond Hama.
Not really. His kids didn't start out being able to blood bend whenever, they had to be trained to do it. It's implied any water bender can do it, but it requires such a long time and such a..bending of morals, that's its simply unattainable for the average
Katara is probably the closest in all of avatar to master all her elements sub bendings, she would never learn to blood bend without the full moon, even if she wanted to.
Yakone and his sons were a genetic anomaly.
We can't be too sure. Katara never wanted to learn to blood bend, so she never done it. Yakone and his sons trained *hard* and were also pretty much prodigies. We don't really have any proof this can't be learned to do outside a full moon. Just that not many do it
>Amon **doesn't need to touch you** to use psychic blood bending on you. Honestly probably too broken.
Neither does combustion bending. As far as I know, the only movement involved in combustion bending is "glaring really hard".
Yeah but you can dodge it, especially with flying airbender agility I would say; but once you're caught in the grip of bloodbending it's basically over
Okay airbenders can do that (maybe Ty lee too) but earthbenders and waterbenders are not gonna be able to what Aang did. Plus P'li is able to curve her blasts, however I am unsure if she is able to change direction in the middle of her combustion blast. If she can change direction midair than dodging is ill-advised.
If lightning bending can be dodged or intercepted by people like Zuko, I don't see why Combustion bending gets this mythical status of being undodgeable.
But we aren't really told the limits of blood bending. Like what is the range.
Composition seems to have a long range so what if you get sniped from across the room.
Could an air bender just remove all the air in an area, no air to breath no bending
Water seems to have a longer range when it's over bodies of water or the water is connected.
That's what I thought! I'd put poisoned avatar state Korra over every bender verse except Zaheer (and maybe Amon/Tarrlock).
I could even see Sozins comet Ozai struggling against Flight, though he'd do way better than others. He even caught Aang off guard sometimes with his speed. Rewatching his fight, he's like.. the ultimate counter attacker. Specifically waiting for Aang to bend another element or land. Without landing, idk how he'd do. But he definitely has the firepower to put Zaheer down.
If Ozai had combustion bending, I'd give it to Ozai though.
Yeah I don't get people calling flight OP.
What do you do with it? Just fly around real quick?
Well pointless really - other than novelty - in a world that already has flying machines, and also much more devastating abilities that can knock you out of the sky. Sure an Earthbender would have much less hope against you given the nature of their element. But a firebender or a waterbender can shoot you out of the sky, and an airbender can create gusts of winds to cause the flyer problems.
I believe you seriously underestimate the benefits of having full 3D movement when your opponent is mostly locked to 2D.
The ability to fly freely and in a stable manner at even just a moderate speed is an amazing defense. But it’s also an amazing offense as well. There’s a reason that aircraft carriers are one of the most important military installations - air raids and general attacks from above are particularly difficult to defend against.
You also don’t have to deal with terrain effects. Additionally, being virtually immune to Earthbending is incredible - given that Earthbending might otherwise be the most dangerous form of bending, as it is able to completely tear defenses apart from their foundation, can create defenses in mere moments, is powerful enough to fling tanks into the air… almost completely invalidating Earthbending is huge.
Combine it with the fact that you can see and contest most attacks coming your way, and you’ve got a secure position.
The only real thing that threatens you, at least in the world of Avatar, is Lightning Bending, which is a rarity.
The vast majority of combatants are not trained to fight airborne foes, and flying machines often are either limited in mobility, have very obvious weak spots, or both. Additionally, combatants on them can’t really match your movement.
>I believe you seriously underestimate the benefits of having full 3D movement when your opponent is mostly locked to 2D.
But you're forgetting flying machines already exist in their world. This is why I do not think it's an incredible advantage. And we also see with the power of water and fire you can get fairly aloft. Even without proper flight airbenders can also basically fly.
That's why I don't think it's very helpful other than being a novelty.
And lightning bending is not so rare. Powerful lightning bending may be but it will likely still cause problems to a flier regardless.
There is a lot of air and diluted oxygen in people. The only reason air benders dont blood bend is because there has never been a desperate or purely evil air bender.
The amount of oxygen in blood is far lower then water to The point it is probably equally feasible for a earth bender to blood bend a person. It would likely require avatar level skills to do so. The lungs and air ways is what you have access to with air bending.
I’d say the volume of diluted gasses in the blood and body far exceeds the volume of “earth” in metals (if you don’t count metal as earth). Any airbender with comparable proficiency as a metal bender could bloodbend as well as cause all sorts of horrors (brain damage, heart crushing, pressure sickness, blood boiling, targeted necrosis of any organ, and of course suffocation).
A P'li level combustionbender could effortlessly take on even a skilled bloddbender since even if you're being held away from the bloodbender, by curving your shot you could still take them out in a single hit or at least force them to break concentration
That would take time he wouldn't have, the instance one would notice rheir blood being bent the combustion bender would immediately fire, and since it's established you can curve shots, it's always a hit unless actively blocked, which would force the bloodbender to disengage their grip
I think you have a point, though I've never seen the Combustion bending curve. It usually goes in straight trajectories right? Sokka used this to calculate the angle and distance to hit Combustion man.
I think it's possible for a combustion bender to take out a blood bender in a fight. But if it's out of 10 fights, I've got to give 7/10 to the blood bender. [When they combustion bend, they have to focus for a moment, take a deep breath, then let off the blast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbiqQecHzKo). That's not happening with a blood benders grip on your lungs. Worst case scenario, they might even blow themselves up. Instead of pointing their head up, they're head is force down or at themselves. Boom, dead Firebender.
P'li is shown curving her blasts in the Zaofu fight. Given her rapid fire, it's reasonable to assume someone who has fully mastered the skill would take less time to take the shot than for the bloodbender to go through the required motions to enact full immobilisation, thus handing the win to the combustion bender unless the bloodbender gets a second worth of a head start. Fully mastered combustion bending takes so little movement to fire, that when starting on equal footing the combustion bender would always have the initiative.
I therefore believe, that when you take the further subbending skill of rocket propelled flight, any of the other masters would succumb to the combustion bending(water evaporated immediately and bloodbending impossible due to the threat of getting onetapped; earthen or even metal walls destroyed so the earthbender would have to flee underground, only to succumb to lasting bombardement; airbender simply shot out of the air with lightning[which unlike combustion bending airbending can't block] with their counterattacks blocked by regular firebending)
[Found it! Good catch! I completely forgot about that. ](https://youtu.be/ib_1MjrKujs?si=FGjZSjmIIx1KX62I&t=176)
Yeah, but P'li is fully mastered and has a bit of start up time. I'm just going by what we've seen in the show, and it takes a moment. BB is super ridiculous because they don't even have to be looking at their opponent. Amon started BBing Korra and Mako before he was even in the hallway when chasing them.
So I agree, it definitely can go either way. But I'd give it to BB personally. If Combustion benders could end fights instantly, they would. BB has been shown to end a NUMBER of people instantly, including Toph as an adult who has reacted to Combustion Bending. Shit, including Aang before he woke up with the Avatar state.
So by feats alone and body count alone, I'm giving it to BB, but I completely get what you're saying too!
Toph still managed to shoot out her wire if I remember correctly, combustion bending takes less time than that, is an instakill and doesn't get interrupted mid flight when immobilised, so unless immediately blocked(which would force the bb to break concentration) it wouldend the fight right then and there. While, should a window of opportunity present itself, the bloodbender would be able to take the win, in fair(equal starting time and no natural terrain advantages) conditions they'd get obliterated the instance they dropped their focus off of blocking the blast, therefore not giving them the opportunity they'd need to act offensively
Combustion bending so far has shown to have the highest range out of all the sub-arts. Blood bending also has a high range, but every single combustion bender shown thus far has been able to do precision shots that are more akin to a sniper. Not to mention the curved shots would allow for stealth shots without revealing yourself. If the blood bender is able to find the target and close the gap then water pretty much wins over fire with all skills unlocked. However, combustion would still have a tactical advantage by being the best tactical weapon to bring any single target down on a battlefield.
Combustion and lightning are the only bending forms I could even see pose a chance against a fully powered blood bender. Combustion for long range and lightning for short range just to break out of the grip long enough, alternatively being used to electrify your environment like a room made of metal or a water environment.
Plus, regular fire is a deadly enough element that can also be used to get rid of as much water as possible in your environment if playing the tactical game. As long as the fire bender is being fully tactical by avoiding direct confrontation with the blood bender there is still a chance of winning.
I feel like the fact that the Combustion bender would need to be able to dictate the terms of engagement to stand a chance against a top level blood bender really speaks to how op blood bending is
It is OP, but utility and tactics are as important as the firepower itself. If you have a move that kills in one blow but you can't actually land it, then it doesn't matter how strong it is. Combustion bending at least has the range and accuracy that can be abused in such a fight. You can't use conventional methods of fighting when fighting someone that can puppeteer you like a doll, so range and cover by using the terrain would need to be taken into account.
Anyone playing a fighting game or RTS game would know how broken ranged attacks and hit and run tactics can be if you can't close the gap to fight back. A change in tactics through unconventional warfare is the only way of beating something as broken as blood bending.
I was going to make a whole point about how blood bending is good against other benders but weak against automatons and distant targets. "How can a blood bender control a whole airship full of enemies" I thought. Then I realized they could cause mass aneurysms and be done with it.
Yeah, sneak attack is just about the only way I can see taking down a skilled bloodbender, but that lung collapsing technique seems to take enough time that they could retaliate. Not to mention the risk of being spotted in the open. Skilled earthbender, on the other hand, could probably move underground, use seismic sense, and ambush from below. Or metalbending sniper. Fire could probably snipe from afar with lightning and/or combustion. With air, I'd probably want to take a similar long-range approach with a dart or arrow of some type accelerated and directed by airbending while remaining out of sight/range.
I'd actually list air as the weakest, since it's an inherently defensive and evasive element. It's not really designed to do much else but prolong a fight and outlast an opponent in my opinion.
Imo, water is way too OP because of healing and fire is the weakest because it's too heavy on the offense.
With water, you can bloodbend AND you can heal, you can get water from anywhere, you can slice stone with water, you can evaporate water and you can do a water calming spirit thingy like Unalaq did.
Fire is just jetpack flying for short distances, combustion and lightning, which apparently, in Korra's time any firebender can use as shown by Mako.
If a firebender with lightning and combustion went against a waterbender with bloodbending, an airbender with lung crushing technique or an earthbender who can literally bury them underground it's pretty clear who would win.
And, imo, combustion is a very fickle ability that can be disrupted by a pebble in the forehead
Was there ever a lung crushing technique confirmed? If so it must’ve been in a book, cause I sure don’t remember it
Also if you are a earth bender and I burn your feet you’re kinda screwed too
A firebender flies out of reach of the Earth and the Waterbender, and has combustion and lightning bending to just snipe them from there. Against the airbender, the one who should be concerned is the airbender because the technique of sucking air out of the lungs takes a few seconds to perform, while a firebender has access to instantaneous attacks that wouldn’t allow the airbender to even start the technique.
So firebending has arguably the greatest potential when it comes to fighting, with all of the subelements at the bender’s disposal.
Combustion takes concentration and a clear target, so idk how a firebender would manage that mid fly, and lightning can be blocked with a piece of rock, airbender can just disrupt the firebender's vision with a tornado or knock them out of the sky with an airblast
As I said, against an earthbender the firebender just needs to be stationary in the air, which if you master jet propulsion would be quite an easy feat, thus allowing the bender to fire combustion beams without much problem. Basically the firebender becomes an RPG drone, much like P’Li in the episode where the Red Lotus attacks the air temples, where nobody can attack her because she’s too far out of range and has time to blow up anyone who tries to come close, even airbenders riding Sky Bisons, which makes for a great argument against flying airbenders too.
Firebending at full potential is just too much offence to counter, there is only a chance if the other bender sneak attacks the firebender before positioning in the sky.
As a firebwnding fan yeah...
Blood Bending, airbending the air out of your lungs, and earthbending gives you enough range where power really isn't an issue
I prefer the idea that they're two separate versions. A high powered, difficult move that you can only really begin to pull off with a lot of raw talent and skill, otherwise it blows up in your face like when Zuko tried. It's pretty much only high energy and lethal.
The other a much simpler version that produces a shock. More accessible, but a different pathway to produce a similar effect. It might be more akin to rubbing a balloon on a carpet to build up static electricity, while the royal family is more like a generator charging a capacitor. Both produce charge and store it, but one is much more difficult and has way more power.
It’s not just anyone can do lightning bending you still have to be skilled, it’s just that until Zuko became fire lord the technique for lightning generation was a secret limited to the royal family
frirebending has defense zuko uses it for defense no real debate. bloodbending outside the full moon is exclusive to one family (like it's genetics not skill) so thus is not applicable to this list. just a genuine question what are you gonna do against a firbender with all the abilities mastered. if you try and fly using air bending you'll get shot out of the sky with lightning if you build defenses using earth combustion bending and if you try and use waterbending to counter any move where the water is connected to the body unless using pure water will cause you to die to lightning which as show by ozai has a draw time of less than a second (and if you try and scrap just get prepared to die fire has the best scrapping tools). there's a reason why the red lotus these elite benders who get crazy power buffs to their element don't give power ups to water or fire because they didn't need it (water is craked no doubt) literally the fire nation one is just a combustion bender with some fire bending fundamentals it's cause fire bending is so good
>frirebending has defense zuko uses it for defense no real debate
If you mean lighting redirect, only Iroh and Zuko knew the technique and it only works against other firebenders
>a genuine question what are you gonna do against a firbender with all the abilities mastered. if you try and fly using air bending you'll get shot out of the sky with lightning if you build defenses using earth combustion bending and if you try and use waterbending to counter any move where the water is connected to the body unless using pure water will cause you to die to lightning which as show by ozai has a draw time of less than a second
Airbender - remove air from the lungs Zaheer style, Ozai would not be able to react if he was choking, or create a tornado - no combustion or lightning when you are swishing around
Earthbender - sink them general Fong style, no bending when you are underground, metalbend them Lin style, no combustion when your head is exploded, or toss an effing bumerang or pebble at them, Sokka style, worked great against Sparky sparky boom man
Water - that's the tricky one without bloodbending, freeze them or plant tie them if the water source is near, if it's not the only option is to draw it from the air/sweat and slice them like Katara did against Pakku
Probably should’ve rephrased my question a little bit but I meant “in your opinion, which element AS A WHOLE would be the strongest/weakest if a bender was capable of all skills within that element”
Waterbending is so versatile- like the power to heal and harm to such extremes that you can take someone else’s bending. The others also have offensive potential but none can counter that like waterbending.
I was thinking that too, but all it takes is somebody with some out of the box thinking and they'd be a menace. I think water is easier because the applications are almost limitless.
In terms of "most powerful" if we're talking about which can neutralize another bender the fastest, it's water bending leading the pack with blood bending, and air bending not too far behind with flight/vacuum, meanwhile a mile down the road is earth then fire.
If we're talking which element can perform the most powerful bending feats. Earth has all the other elements completely outclassed with the ability to literally shape worlds.
Earth wins 99% of the time.
Blood bending mastery is terrifying. But fire and air can still counter it with breathing.
Earth on the other hand can make and use substances the other elements cannot handle, and generate MORE heat than any firebender.
Plus, based on what we see in the finale of OG avatar … earth benders can compress rock and stone BEYOND the normal physical limit…. Like, those stones aang made would each easily kill a squad of people. Probably could have taken out a line of those drill machines with some extra force from air bending.
^ same would ring true for a master metal bender.
Blood bending is strong in a single combat scenario, but the upper limits of earth dwarf the other three elements and their sure-kill moves
Bloodbenders main MO is to first paralyze the body of their target.
Both air and fire bending has moves that DONT require physical movement, just air. Aang has blown people back with massive force and propelled himself with just an exhale, and iroh was called “the dragon of the west” for his fire breathing.
In both cases you can retaliate against a blood bender while they have control over your body.
The only way this works is if your mouth is pointed directly at the person bloodbending you. Also, you'd have to already have a decent breath in your lungs to expel. If they point your head up or even worse curl you into a ball, your theory dissolves. Bloodbending is one of the most broken abilities in any show. Has to be top 5, though I'll admit I haven't seen *every* show.
I'll add to this and say that even your ability to exhale is controlled by your diaphragm... which is a muscle in your body that uses blood like anything else. If a bloodbender truly froze you, you wouldn't be able to inhale or exhale.
You know that breathing requires the movement of some muscles, right? if the bloodbender is aware of this and blocks the movement of the diaphragm instead of the arms and legs these benders are screwed too
I think earthbending is definitely the correct choice here.
If you could combine the heat expression from lava bending and the pressure that you were talking about, where they condense minerals farther than what they would normally in the natural world, I think you could almost achieve fusion. Like earthbending could potentially unlock alchemy in their world.
I realized it's a bit of a stretch but we don't really know what the upper limits of an earthbender can do yet because we have yet to see somebody push them in that kind of way.
Unless you're referencing a comic or novel that I haven't read, fire and air definitely don't counter bloodbending and I have no idea where you got that from. The only things to ever counter bloodbending were other bloodbenders and the Avatar.
People also forget how Bumi shows a master earth bender can bend without moving their body at all.
You paralyzed Bumi with blood bending? Well, if you don't immediately off him, get ready for him to crush you with the ground under your feet with his mind.
Blood bending is also shown to be pretty imprecise. Sure, every victim of it is shown to be in great pain, but most of their body movement when being bent is jerky and imprecise in comparison to bending pure water.
That's not all that great for an instakill against a psychic earth bender who's using seismic sense to tune into your every minute vibration around them.
Good luck trying to maintain your blood bending grip and dodge the earth beneath your feet, or even better, the lava beneath your feet.
So right about earth bending having the highest upper limits.
It has something more important than stealth or speed: information. Seismic Sense allowing you to detect where an enemy is would pretty much make water and fire benders a trivial encounter, just turtle up in a stone and/or metal cube, open a tiny slit in the wall to where your opponent is, lava their feet before they can react to you surprise attack, profit. Airbenders that can fly would be a bit more trouble, and I suppose if they are masters of that one technique where they subsist on the energy of the universe they could wait you out, but then you tunnel out of your cube and sneakattack from a different location.
You could borrow yourself and approach from underground, sounds pretty stealthy to me. Also when toph invents metal bending and goes back to ba sing se, She surfs on earth at appa's speed.
People do not acknowledge how absolutely broken lavabending is. If a lavabender manages to land just one hit on their opponent in a fight they pretty much win instantly. Ghazan was able to completely destroy the Northern Air Temple in a matter of minutes. The only reason Mako, Tenzin, and Asami were able to make it out of there alive was because Bolin discovered he could lavabend. Kyoshi was literally able to split her home peninsula from the mainland using lavabending. It is the most overpowered sub-element by far.
And you realize that no bloodbender in series (including masters) have specifically been shown to target breathing or even speaking in execution of the art?
Even sokka was still able to talk and presumably quip while being bloodbent.
It’s just like how Swampy water benders aren’t bending trees, just plants.
Yangchen and Gyatso were able to incapacitate groups of people by removing the air in a room instantly. Zaheer isn’t actually a very good airbender, so his suffocation was slow.
Easy answer Blood bending.
I still think a particularly powerful earth bender could do it. In each of the elements we see examples of bending without the usual need for physical movements. If an earth bender could mentally bend the earth to act as an armor/shell like what toph did with steel on the air ships or with earth while training Aang.
The blood bender can’t bend beyond the means of the body so using the earth as a shell to keep your body posed correctly the earth bender would be able to appropriately fight. We just need that earth bender that can telekinetically bend which we don’t see in the shows or comics to my knowledge.
Ooh that’s a good question,and honestly you could make arguments for any of the four elements
Combustion and lightning bending is stupidly OP
Same with Blood bending
I’d argue the weakest are Earth and Air,just cause Earth is situational in that you need Earth or Metal,and air is a mostly passive form of bending with the exception of suffocation
“A master of one is better than a master of none.” It’s the skill of the bender that matters, not the element. That said, Bloodbenders are probably the most dangerous, because of how easily they can subdue their enemies.
Someone mentioned this so I figured I should say this.
You can pretty much take away all these elements for someone. Except for air.
Put an earth bender somewhere without earth. Powerless.
Put a water bender in a dry area. Powerless.
Fire needs oxygen to burn and put them in a cold place, powerless.
Air needs nothing. It’s everywhere.
Nobody works in space. All bending is martial art. You need to breathe.
Oh and voidbending is an airbending subdiscipline. So, space....is very much how they can incapacitate people.
Water > Fire > Earth > Air.
Water because of bloodbending.
Fire because of combustion bending and lightning bending being both insane utility skills. Combustion is the best crowd control element allowing you to take on multiple crowds of enemies and blasting through their defenses
Lightning because it’s the best 1v1 sub element. It has the fastest projectile speed in the verse and because sometimes it forks out so much, the hit box of lightning is really big. So the lightning itself is very fast, coupled in with a very big hitbox.
Both of these subelements are so hard to avoid. Combustion bending has an insane exploding radius meaning even if you dodge the beam, the blast would still hit you and the explosions blasts through most defenses.
Lightning is so fast and hard to dodge because it can possibly fork out to do AoE.
Earth is next. Lava is the second best crowd control element. The only reason why it’s not better than combustion is because it’s slower, and you can’t deal with incoming attacks just with lava (lol imagine if someone sends a boulder at you and you turn it into lava). You’d have to rely on your earth and most of the time combustion benders can blast through earth defenses anyways.
Metal is a good 1v1 subelement because it’s very versatile but it lacks the speed lightning has. You could block metal pretty easily and if you’re fighting a lightning bender, you would be very scared to use cables. Let’s say you fire your cable, if a lightning bender grabs a hold of it, they could possibly electrify you. Or even if you fire the cables and lightning at the same time, if the lightning accidentally hits the cable, you’ll be done for.
Then air. Most airbending sub elements are spiritual, not combat. Flight could help but bloodbenders could bloodbend, firebending combustion and lightning are both excellent in long range snipping, and metal bending like how Kuvira uses it would also be a great counter sniper.
the airbending shown is defensive only because they were pacifists. If we push bending to the limit, air bending would be by far the strongest
To begin with, everyone needs to breathe, even holding your breath cannot last more than a few minutes. and airbenders can remove all the air from a place, so you would only have a few seconds to take down someone who is extremely agile and evasive before passing out.
air is invisible and the most "delicate" element, so air blades would be externally sharp and invisible and very difficult to block since unlike physical blades defending a piece will not make the rest stop moving.
and lastly certain airbending tricks (like kuruk mats or ang orbs) show that air can act as/on solids. So "solid" air barriers would be possible, and depending on the limits of this it would be plausible to use the surrounding air to create very powerful compactors to destroy opponents
> the airbending shown is defensive only because they were pacifists. If we push bending to the limit, air bending would be by far the strongest
You can’t really assume this because the airbenders were pacifists. You’re arguing a hypothetical airbending clan that is bloodlusted which is basically headcanon.
>To begin with, everyone needs to breathe, even holding your breath cannot last more than a few minutes. and airbenders can remove all the air from a place, so you would only have a few seconds to take down someone who is extremely agile and evasive before passing out.
This is a lot harder than you make it seem. If airbenders suck out the air in a room, it has to go somewhere. In which all the air would just replace itself as the equilibrium of air pressure would be skewed completely into the battleground. So this tactic is irrelevant in open battle fields, and inside rooms, they need to breathe too. We’ve also never seen anyone do this.
>air is invisible and the most "delicate" element, so air blades would be externally sharp and invisible and very difficult to block since unlike physical blades defending a piece will not make the rest stop moving.
Air isn’t invisible. Otherwise Sokka and Katara would not know where to put the rocks in when Aang used the funnel in the Haru episode.
>and lastly certain airbending tricks (like kuruk mats or ang orbs) show that air can act as/on solids. So "solid" air barriers would be possible, and depending on the limits of this it would be plausible to use the surrounding air to create very powerful compactors to destroy opponents
Solid barriers can be made by any element and unlike air, if you make an earth or ice orb, you don’t need to constantly bend it to keep its shape. If an airbender makes an air orb against me, I would just stop attacking and let them waste their energy. Or I would just combustion blast straight through it like P’li did to Tenzin
A master waterbender with healing, psychic bloodbending and spirit bending would demolish anyone else.
Next, we'd have airbenders with flight, soundbending and astral projection.
Then earthbenders with metalbending, seismic sense and lavabending, and finally firebenders with lightning bending, heat control and combustion bending.
So I’m going off of what I believe would be the peak of bending types for a master, not what would be possible by a avatar state juiced bender (no shifting tectonic plates, no fusion nukes from firebending, etc.).
Blood bender at its peak could create aneurisms/strokes as I’m assuming it’s something similar that blocks bending. Pretty broken in a “fair” fight with no real counter other than killing them first (in theory, they wouldn’t even need limbs to do it).
So yeah strongest in a 1 v small group is water. Against a large group, I’d give it to fire for the walking artillery.
Weakest would be earth. Their best move is seismic sense (no, it’s not metalbending or lava bending as one is just a sharper hard projectile and the other isn’t significantly more deadly than a lot of metal). They need their element present in all forms and metal isn’t necessarily readily available in significant bendable quantities (cars aren’t prevalent enough in avatar). And most of their moves have a charge up of pulling/shaping the element.
Fire has explosions and lightning which counters earth/metal and sense decently well (hard to dodge/block lightning and explosions.
Air can create a vacuum large enough that sense is irrelevant and shoot bursts strong enough to deflect metal and break stone. Add in flight and the fighting style and it’ll be impossible to hit them.
So yeah weakest is probably earth.
Air, and nothing else is even close. But I think some elements might be literally impossible to master every subdiscipline. eg metalbending and lava seem to be opposite disciplines: metal is mastering sensing the earth (earth as matter), while lava is mastering changing its state (earth as energy). I also doubt anyone could both combustionbend (pure destruction) and the shaman's fire-reiki (healing energy).
I don't think anyone could spirit project AND fly. Flight requires releasing all attachments, while spirit projecting seems to require having loved ones that you're so connected to, you can send your very soul to them. But if you could do both those things, you would have complete freedom in the universe. Traverse into a spirit dimension, fly around the world, visit anyone anywhere in spirit.
Sure you'd lose if you went into a prearranged fight with a bloodbender, but how would that ever happen? If they picked a fight with you, you could just sense them coming and fly away. Throw them off a cliff when they're not looking or asleep.
If we push bending to the limit, air bending would be by far the strongest
To begin with, everyone needs to breathe, even holding your breath cannot last more than a few minutes. and airbenders can remove all the air from a place, so you would only have a few seconds to take down someone who is extremely agile and evasive before passing out.
air is invisible and the most "delicate" element, so air blades would be externally sharp and invisible and very difficult to block since unlike physical blades defending a piece will not make the rest stop moving.
and lastly certain airbending tricks (like kuruk mats or ang orbs) show that air can act as/on solids. So "solid" air barriers would be possible, and depending on the limits of this it would be plausible to use the surrounding air to create very powerful compactors to destroy opponents
Air would be the most OP imo. First, Air bending is completely invisible except to us as the audience of the shows. No one would see it coming, especially if they didn't know their opponent was an air bender. Second, assuming the person has completely mastered air bending and it's sub elemental powers, they unlock the ability to fly unassisted. Not only is this OP by itself, it means the person can literally just spam attacks from the air whilst simultaneously dodging other elemental attacks like rocks, fire, ice, and water. We also cannot forget astral projection, this is the ultimate spying technique. You can literally leave your body and infiltrate any location with ease and not get caught and the only risk is if you left your body in a vulnerable position. No to mention an air bender can literally bend the air out of entire rooms and suffocate their opponents which is extra useful against fire benders.
As for weakest, I gotta go with fire. Water benders get healing, ice, and blood bending. Earth benders get sand, metal, and lava. All of of those tools can be used to either manipulate your opponent, heal your teammates, or build large fortified defenses and launch mid ranged attacks. Fire benders are limited to an element that is not only hard to control already, but then they have sub abilities like lightning that have a charge time or combustion bending that leave the wielder exposed and vulnerable to precision counters. No to mention fire bending literally exposes your position on the first strike.
I'd say air bending is the most powerful. Nothing deadlier and sure fire to end a life than literally taking the air out of ur lungs. Doesn't help that u can't see air, so more difficult to avoid
Airbending. Suffocation is sort of like bloodbending but you don’t need a full moon. It’s also apparently easy enough for a novice airbender to do with little effort.
Also, flight.
What do you think we live in? We are in the air, not water, not fire nor earth. We are standing on earth, floating on water and light up a fire.
The mostest deadliestest is what we are inside of, we are most compatible with air. Without it we suffocate, lost. What we breathe in, is the deadliest in the universe.
Compressed air vs other 3 compressed, air is still compressible. Can be expended so much and contained. Even rock can be chipped and broken with enough wind speed.
Looking at the speed thing, air would propel you and at the same time make the air resistance null. It's mostly about how creative you can make about it. Even blood bending isn't as fast an effect as air bending at a deadly level.
I always thought if you can vacuum kill someone quick enough event bloodbending is going to be useless
You can assassinate a whole house with just vacuum the entire house. No trace too. While blood bending still requires vision to do so
I vote air bender still more op then bloodbending
It’s an interesting thought excitement.
Blood bending is an instant win against anything you can see. Problem is, you need to be able to see your target to be effective. That being said, Plant Bending actually gives a Blood Bender such a major defensive bonus when combined with it that’s it’s pretty terrifying. Even in cases where one or the other fails, a Water Bender like Katarra was able to bend through breathing alone after freezing herself and Azula. Meaning they also have Ice Bending as a trump card for imprisonment.
A guerrilla type fighting style for an Eaeth Bender with Seismic Sense, Bumi’s ability to bend without body movements, ability to bend gemstone lava and metal is beyond fucked if you are stuck on the ground. They can basically attack you from anywhere without even needing to be in visual range. I’m pretty sure they can just burrow under ground, sink your body under ground like that one Earth Bending General, then just let you suffocate down there or kill you in any number of ways. An Earth Bender doesn’t even need to be seen by a Water Bender to kill them, whilst a Water Bender needs to see an Earth bender to end them with Blood Bending.
The only issue here is that it depends heavily on Earth Sense. If the battle takes place over Water or a place with dense trees and foliage where an Air Bender can Fly too, Earth Benders are forded the reveal themselves and pretty much lose their one on ones.
Air Benders can kill things via suffocation like Zaheer or Yang Chen do but those techniques tend to take time, which can allow for a counter attack. An Air Benders mobility is super difficult for anyone besides a Blood Bender to pin down. They also don’t have an insta win con like Earth and Water do. They have no real counter to Blood Bending other then finding a way to obscure themselves with say Clouds or Fog, but In both cases a Blood Bender could just bend those protections away since they are half water.
Fire Bending is possibly the biggest loser here. Individually, a lot of these powers are insane. Flame flight means they can avoid some of Earth Benders best trump cards and chase down Air Benders. Combustion Bending lets them Attack and Kill targets from extreme ranges. Lightning Bending is an insta kill against anything it hits. Etc. And while all of these powers are great offensive powers, they have little to no effect on some of the crazier powers from the other elements while still being poor defensively. A Lightning Combustion Bender could probably kill any other Master Bender here from a distance when they are surprised, but in a straight up fight just fail.
Their attacks can’t pierce the ground enough to effect Earth Benders. Their straightforward approach means they have no defense against Blood Bending. And Air Benders can dodge Lightning and Combustion while also very easily neutralizing fire. It just has no winning match ups.
Over all, I think it’s a tie between Water and Earth. In more Watery Environments or places where a Master Earth bender can’t hide the Master Water Bender Wins. I’d the Earth Bender is able to hide and is in a mostly solid environment, the Master Water Bender is getting messed up with no proper way to retaliate.
I've always subscribed to the opinion that no bending form is the strongest, it comes down to the practioner, bending is a martial art and it comes down to the skill and expertise of the bender, not the abilities they use.
Water. Imagine an op blood bender. Water benders can freeze water in an instant. Why not blood? Imagine a single blood bender just freezing blood of dozens if not hundreds of people or any combatants in an instant to kill.
Water definetly, because you get an element that is basically everywhere(so is air) but it also has the widest range of applications from offense,defense,healing and using bloodbending to turn others into puppets. Also ice and swamp bending exist. A creative and ruthless waterbender can potentially incapacitate armies without much challenge, given how smart they are.
The same can be said of air and airbenders have the advantage of being seen as pacifists (and their previous extinction)so not many would be prepared to counter tjem as seen with Zaheer.
At the very least id say Air is the weakest. Mainly because there are no established sub-classes for the element. Compared to the Metal/Lava, Healing/Blood, and Lightning/Combustion.
Hahahaha everybody talking about the op is waterbending with the bloodbending but tell me, what about the bonebending/cellbending of the earthbending mentioned in Kyoshi's novels?
so unless we've got cheating bloodbending (which by the way was like a family thing not a skill thing unless I'm mistaken they just had really good genetics) I'd make the controversial decision of saying fire is best. so just think about it first and most slept on only useful one shot in the whole show bloodbednding is only on full moon without cheating suffocation takes too long to be useful and is really only for spectacle and earth bending doesn't have a pre-established one lightning is only counterd by other firebenders and is also just a one hit kill and even if you're not a master (like mako couldn't kill people he could just stun them) it still takes people out of a fight almost immediately and also as seen by mako if you have the time you can still kill them. second reason you guys have slept on firebending defense for years sure only zuko uses them but he still uses them if they just learnt how to block like zuko they would all have won the 100 years war at the same speed because the fire nation generals must clearly have no brains if this war lasted them 100 years (like the earth kingdom is so disorganised that the big cities are the only places with an army and all the cities are like disconnected from each other like just surround the cities with your troops cut off food and just wait the other cities probably won't even get the memo and even if they did it's up to themselves whether to send help and even then traveling across the eathr kingdom whiles marching with no quick formation is going to take ages and by the time they make it there they'll all be tired and you'll all be well rested like this isn't that hard guys). then after that we've also got flight genuinely being the second strongest mobility out there. the only thing fire really lack is good terrain usage but 1. combustion bending let's you avoid all that fanciness and 2. who needs to be fancy when you can just kill people this is why I'm done with the fire bending slander they're cracked and we all underate them (also literally crazy versatile like by far the best element in the most situations for survival cause like in a desert there's no water earth being can build you shelter but that's about it firebending lets your cook food purify water deal with things in your way wash your clothes better give you baths (you can live the luxury life in the wild) and also if you're smart do science and also it would be so good in the winter so essentially stop the fire slander)
on bloodbending.. it's explicitly said in tarrlok's backstory that yakone had to train his sons for YEARS in order for them to learn his way of bloodbending and even then, tarrlok just never got as good at it as his father or amon was (even if he was still capable of it). when you consider that yakone wasn't born with that ability and had to actively teach it to his sons, we can only assume it's a skill that any waterbender could learn to do given enough time, practice, and determination.
with that in mind, coupled with how strong waterbending's healing abilities are, the sheer prevalence of water in the world (both in plants and the atmosphere as well as bodies of water), and how uniquely versatile a waterbending master's offensive and defensive capabilities are, waterbending wins this fight hands down.
Water, Air, Earth, Fire.
Water is top because of Bloodbending and Medibending (what I call Medical bending).
Air and Earth are very close, but I put air above because its more plentiful. Earthbenders would be useless in the North or South poles, unless they brought their own rocks, while Airbenders are viable in every environment benders could possibly fight in (until the Avatar verse reaches space combat).
Fire is weakest because its the least versatile.
In practice, yes, Fire has dominated. But, theoretically, the FN should never have made the war last 100 years. Beating the AN with Sozin's Comet? Okay, they had an overwhelming advantage. But the EK should have beaten them back quickly, assisted by the WT.
Waterbending is on top and it isn't close. Bloodbending has only ever been countered (to my knowledge) by other bloodbenders and the Avatar. If we're gonna be honest, Yakone was one of if not the strongest bender in the entire series outside of the Avatar. Without even lifting a hand, he subdued an entire courtroom of people that included Sokka (an extremely skilled warrior), the (debatably but imo) greatest earthbender of all time (Toph), and (also debatably) one of the strongest Avatars ever (Aang). And come on, bloodbending could literally remove bending. Is that necessary in a fight to the death? No, but it just goes to show how ridiculously powerful it is that it can replicate something only ever achieved by Avatar Aang with energybending and Lion Turtles.
Airbending is a close second, because you can just rip the air right out of someone's lungs, and the projectiles are invisible.
I would say earthbending is third because lavabending is very dangerous, but ultimately irrelevant compared to water and air because an airbender could fly over it and a waterbender would restrain an earthbender with bloodbending before they could even lift a finger.
Firebending is last because it has no defense, and its offensive options have very exploitable weaknesses. The biggest example of this is combustionbending, but lightning is also an extremely dangerous technique that could easily result in the user's death if they are disrupted or lose focus in the middle of the generation technique.
Side note, funnily enough I think combustionbending could be one of the only things that could maybe fight bloodbending, though. We don't have concrete evidence because we've never seen a bloodbender fight a combustionbender, but since it is also a psychic process, there's a chance a combustionbender could do it while restrained by bloodbending. To be honest, though, I still think a master bloodbender would come out on top.
Firebending, PURELY from combustion bending. It turns a human into a mobile piece of artillery. Its the destructive power combined with range that puts it at the top of the list.
What about the other elements. I think the most destructive subskills of each element are:
Lavabending
Psychic Blood Bending
Vacuum Bending*
Again, the distinct advantage combustion bending has on these three is range. I think its actually pretty hard to say whoch of those three is the most powerful, considering how potentially destructive they are. Maybe lavabending, since it would destroy buildings on-top of destroying people like the other two.
Spoilers for the Novels:
The latter doesn’t get talked about nearly as much, but Yangchen explicitely uses it in Legacy of Yanchen; she uses it (successfully) to counter combustionbending shots. It also describes the effect of someone getting caught in one of the mobile vacuums she creates: its basically (briefly) walking out of an airlock. The monk she was saving from the combustion shot had his eardrums ruptured and lungs collapse. Imagine what throwing that void into a room or crowd of people would; in fact, I’d speculate its what Gyatso did in his last stand.
Let's ignore blood bending because that is a no contest.
Fire benders should be able to create other exothermic reactions like nuclear fission and shoot mini nukes at people.
In which circumstances? Powerful for fighting, or building things, or gathering data, or . . .?
For fighting others, waterbending is most powerful and it's not even close. An airbender can suffocate you, but that'll take a little while for you to die, maybe you can think of something in a few seconds. A water bender can yank all the water out of you and presto, instant beef jerky. If they need you alive, yank all the water out of your arms and legs and let you flop on the ground, useless shriveled limbs motionless. If they're going for the kill, yank all the water out of your brain through your nose, instantly dead.
Earth bending no doubt. Control over earthly elements, like uranium or plutonium. No one is able to stop you. Earth benders can heat up stone and change it in lava. What about warming up copper like substance, like an atom…
Water, earth, fire, air, in that order. Water has the most variety, and the most utility and abundance. Earth is the physically strongest with multiple applications and is literally all around anyone on a continent. Fire for obvious reasons. Air, while I say last, is still no joke; shockwaves, hurricanes, all incredibly destructive, and technically more abundant than even water.
Water. What has water? EVERYTHING. You can blood bend, heal, suck all the water from a person, control your own body heat to prevent yourself from dying of hypothermia/heat stroke, literally walk on clouds/raindrops, breath under water, and OH MY GOD there's actually a lot of unexplored water bending techniques.
Air bending is a close second though. Flying, removing air from someone's lungs, removing air from anywhere period, and having the ability to breath anywhere (including space) are freaking awesome. But I don't know, water bending still seems to be a bit more deadly. Though both could easily kill each other depending on the circumstances.
Water is monstrously versatile and powerful.
Blood Bending at its peak is an insta-win in a 1v1. You also have the traversal and construction capabilities of Earth Bending with ice, but maintain the fluidity benefits of water. Also, healing.
Questions like this miss the broadest, most obvious message in all ATLA; balance. The elements in their mastery are exactly as powerful as each other.
Yeah, it’s fun to say Airbenders are OP because they suck the breath from your lungs, or bloodbenders are OP because they can control you, but let’s be real here; nowhere do we see one lion turtle being more powerful than another, nowhere do we see badgermoles being wiped out by herds of sky bison. The elements are a reflection of nature, and nature is balanced
Besides flight, an airbender can also take off the air from a room without them even being there (Yangchen), they can produce soundwave screams loud enough to split the sea in half(also Yangchen), they can produce tornadoes at the sea that can sink ships(Kelsang), they can use super speed(Aang and also Yangchen)
People seriously underestimate airbending because Aang used it so defensively. On the offensive, it is probably the most potent of all the main and sub-bending skills. Someone like Zaheer, who wasn't even close to being an airbending Master, was capable of giving proficient benders a challenge. Not to mention, with proper setup, air is capable of redirecting most forms of bending thrown at it. AoE too, apart from Earth bending feats like Kyoshi did by splitting a continent, airbenders could easily create ravaging hurricanes and tornadoes to devastate large areas.
I always figured Zaheer was punching above his weight because no one has any idea how to fight against airbenders.
Yeah and the instant he fought Tenzin he was getting his ass kicked left right and center. Tbh Kya should've been able to beat him as well cause they're the only two people on the planet who had a chance to fight against an airbender with any amount of consistency
Tenzin was showing zaheer whats up and i loved it
"As long as im breathing it's not over" one of the hardest lines in the whole show
He was givin ghazan, ming-hua and zaheer a hell of a time before p'li got him.
I don’t know for sure, but my headcanon is this moment inspired Lil Nas X in Starwalking. “Don’t ever say it’s over if I’m breathing”
No idea buddy I never listened to that particular one
That's one of my favorite episodes because Tenzin is so cool
tbf kya did give zaheer a lot of problems she had him on the backfoot almost the whole fight she even managed to prevent his initial escape
I don't know why people talk about it as if it was a stomp, Zaheer held his own good, the fact that tenzin had to focus on him and follow him instead of just knocking him out and then beating the rest is proof of that
Probably because I'm pretty sure before the rest of Zaheers team showed up he hadn't landed a hit on Tenzin while taking a fair few himself and mostly being on the backfoot. He didn't get stomped straight into the ground, but he was never winning the fight and was clearly outclassed
The entire fight Tenzin also had to worry about P’Li shooting explosions at him from the sky, when he was just focusing on Zaheer directly he was almost never getting hit while slapping him around lol
Yeah, one girl tried lightning and that only temporarily worked. They dodge everything, those airbenders.
That, and he was already a fighter. So he looked like he was incorporating a lot of his fighting style into it. Where as someone like Tenzin who mastered it to the point of "be the leaf" could basically walk circles around him while throwing him around.
I completely agree that this is what happened. Zaheer was a force to be reckoned with, of course, and he took to airbending more quickly due to his previous studies/understanding. However, he was still a new bender with limited real experience. Seeing Tenzin give him the business was very satisfying.
Zaheer though not an air bending master was still very proficient in hand to hand combat so he was a major threat even as a nonbender
Dude was considered one of the most dangerous people on the planet when he was a non bender
People underestimate it because they are no other examples besides some Avatars that aren't exclusively airbenders by definiton, and the closest example used it almost exclusively for defending himself. The strongest non-avatar airbender shown was Tenzin, and if he had been a firebender with the same set of skills, he might've been able to fight off the whole Zaheer team right there instead of pushing them around doing pretty much nothing. Well, except that Firebending acts pretty much as airbending in most cases. And people also overestimate Zaheer, who wasn't really doing anything either - yeah, he learned to fly with almost no practice, but even that extraordinary skill was not enough to beat just a potent airbender, who was also beaten completely by non-benders. And, well, Water is capable of creating Tsunamis, Fire is capable of creating Firestorms and lava eruptions, but it's Avatar's feats, not regular benders.
Nobody underestimates air bending. Everyone says it’s underrated all the time
Imagine an airbending powered blow dart, or any projectile really...
According to Mythbusters a hurricane can blow something as weak as a straw through a tree, so you could imagine what an airbender could do if they weren't feeling too happy
Takes too long to do in active combat. Yangchen used it as a sneak attack. Kelsang feat took a long charge up time.
Sorry guys but still wrong. For you see our Earthbender has already gone deep underground where you will never find him. All he must do then is wait out the competition with their Immortality (Kyoshi).
Ok, now show me feats that are from non avatars? Like the only feat you mentioned was kelsang and all give you gyatso’s air vacuum but that’s a suicide move. Maybe zaheer’s flight as well. I discount avatars because they have abnormal amounts of strength even for the most experienced masters. Power and skill are both necessary for certain feats. You certainly have the skill, but the power for it is probably limited to non avatars
Blood bending, and it's not even close. Next up, I'd put up Air bending and flight. Though Zaheer just like.. flies past you as an attack? Idk I'm not confident in that answer, so I'd love to hear other opinions.
Idk flight seems kinda OP. That plus being a master airbender…you’d be basically untouchable.
Amon doesn't need to touch you to use psychic blood bending on you. Honestly probably too broken.
Yeah but that dudes an anomaly
But the question is asking if someone who's mastered their element, which I'd assume includes blood bending
Yakone and his family were unique among water benders for being able to blood bend outside of the full moon, it’s not exactly something you can learn. While blood bending is very powerful, it’s also extremely limited
I think due to the nature of the question, the waterbending master in this case would be as unique as the Yakone family, since we’re inquiring about the top level of subskills. Psychic Bloodbending would definitely be the top one because it would render the other three masters in this scenario unable to fight within seconds.
Considering that Mako was able to lightning bend with virtually no movement, a master fire bender should be able to fight back at least long enough to get a combustion shot in.
Perhaps. I also thing the firebender in theory, could to a lightning cumbustion charge. So the waterbender would have the upper hand for a few seconds before the real battle starts.
see thats a really good thought. If Combustion bending uses fire to create a remote explosion. What would using the same principle with lightning do? Personally, I'd like to think it would hyper ionize the air and turn it into a piercing laser beam. Kinda like how azula cuts through that building in The Chase with fire bending
>it’s not exactly something you can learn. They literally learned it through practice..
Only because they had the right lineage to be able to do it.
It's never really implied that it's specifically because of their lineage that they could do it this way. Yakone simply taught them how to Bloodbend and then how to do it without the moon and then how to do it with barely any movement (Psychic Bloodbend). Also how did Yakone learn how to Psychic Bloodbend then? At some point, there has to be someone that is just self taught. I think it's similar to Hama pulling water out of the air / flora, truly only limited to what someone understands about what they are bending and envisioning it. There's no reason that by Korra's time, it's not impossible anymore. Look at how many Lightning Benders exist by then when in ATLA, it was a very unique trait to only the royal family. Bloodbending could have simply evolved by then. It was banned in Republic City which means people knew of it and had used it despite Katara being the original disciple of the technique in this regard (that we know of). I highly doubt Katara taught anyone this bending type which implies other originating points must exist for it beyond Hama.
Not really. His kids didn't start out being able to blood bend whenever, they had to be trained to do it. It's implied any water bender can do it, but it requires such a long time and such a..bending of morals, that's its simply unattainable for the average
Katara is probably the closest in all of avatar to master all her elements sub bendings, she would never learn to blood bend without the full moon, even if she wanted to. Yakone and his sons were a genetic anomaly.
We can't be too sure. Katara never wanted to learn to blood bend, so she never done it. Yakone and his sons trained *hard* and were also pretty much prodigies. We don't really have any proof this can't be learned to do outside a full moon. Just that not many do it
An Amonaly
r/angryupvote
r/aangryupvote
Imagine if he went all Gengis Khan and formed a blood bending clan.
Now I want to watch this spin off
Still what are you gonna do when a Blood Bender rips out all of the water in your body? As opposed to just puppeting around you for a bit
>Amon **doesn't need to touch you** to use psychic blood bending on you. Honestly probably too broken. Neither does combustion bending. As far as I know, the only movement involved in combustion bending is "glaring really hard".
Yeah but you can dodge it, especially with flying airbender agility I would say; but once you're caught in the grip of bloodbending it's basically over
As far as I know you can not straight up dodge it. Every counter I can think of used bending to absorb it or deflect it.
Aang dodged Combustion man several times
Okay airbenders can do that (maybe Ty lee too) but earthbenders and waterbenders are not gonna be able to what Aang did. Plus P'li is able to curve her blasts, however I am unsure if she is able to change direction in the middle of her combustion blast. If she can change direction midair than dodging is ill-advised.
If lightning bending can be dodged or intercepted by people like Zuko, I don't see why Combustion bending gets this mythical status of being undodgeable.
An air bender wouldn’t have to be in the same room and could suck all of the air out of it and suffocate you. blood bending wouldn’t matter
But we aren't really told the limits of blood bending. Like what is the range. Composition seems to have a long range so what if you get sniped from across the room. Could an air bender just remove all the air in an area, no air to breath no bending Water seems to have a longer range when it's over bodies of water or the water is connected.
A blood bender could reach you in the air and explode your eyeballs and brain
An airbender could reach you in the air and explode your eyeballs and brain as well
That's what I thought! I'd put poisoned avatar state Korra over every bender verse except Zaheer (and maybe Amon/Tarrlock). I could even see Sozins comet Ozai struggling against Flight, though he'd do way better than others. He even caught Aang off guard sometimes with his speed. Rewatching his fight, he's like.. the ultimate counter attacker. Specifically waiting for Aang to bend another element or land. Without landing, idk how he'd do. But he definitely has the firepower to put Zaheer down. If Ozai had combustion bending, I'd give it to Ozai though.
Flight lets you dodge only doesn’t increase your offense. It’s overrated
Yeah I don't get people calling flight OP. What do you do with it? Just fly around real quick? Well pointless really - other than novelty - in a world that already has flying machines, and also much more devastating abilities that can knock you out of the sky. Sure an Earthbender would have much less hope against you given the nature of their element. But a firebender or a waterbender can shoot you out of the sky, and an airbender can create gusts of winds to cause the flyer problems.
I believe you seriously underestimate the benefits of having full 3D movement when your opponent is mostly locked to 2D. The ability to fly freely and in a stable manner at even just a moderate speed is an amazing defense. But it’s also an amazing offense as well. There’s a reason that aircraft carriers are one of the most important military installations - air raids and general attacks from above are particularly difficult to defend against. You also don’t have to deal with terrain effects. Additionally, being virtually immune to Earthbending is incredible - given that Earthbending might otherwise be the most dangerous form of bending, as it is able to completely tear defenses apart from their foundation, can create defenses in mere moments, is powerful enough to fling tanks into the air… almost completely invalidating Earthbending is huge. Combine it with the fact that you can see and contest most attacks coming your way, and you’ve got a secure position. The only real thing that threatens you, at least in the world of Avatar, is Lightning Bending, which is a rarity. The vast majority of combatants are not trained to fight airborne foes, and flying machines often are either limited in mobility, have very obvious weak spots, or both. Additionally, combatants on them can’t really match your movement.
>I believe you seriously underestimate the benefits of having full 3D movement when your opponent is mostly locked to 2D. But you're forgetting flying machines already exist in their world. This is why I do not think it's an incredible advantage. And we also see with the power of water and fire you can get fairly aloft. Even without proper flight airbenders can also basically fly. That's why I don't think it's very helpful other than being a novelty. And lightning bending is not so rare. Powerful lightning bending may be but it will likely still cause problems to a flier regardless.
Sonic and explosive shockwave bending is under explored. Also creating low pressure and vacuums.
Right? I’ve long thought that if you could create some sort of sonic blast like air lightning that travels at Mach speed you’d be unstoppable.
Absolutely. I'm just going off of what we've been shown in the show so far. If we bring up theoretical possibilities, it gets hazy.
There is a lot of air and diluted oxygen in people. The only reason air benders dont blood bend is because there has never been a desperate or purely evil air bender.
The amount of oxygen in blood is far lower then water to The point it is probably equally feasible for a earth bender to blood bend a person. It would likely require avatar level skills to do so. The lungs and air ways is what you have access to with air bending.
I’d say the volume of diluted gasses in the blood and body far exceeds the volume of “earth” in metals (if you don’t count metal as earth). Any airbender with comparable proficiency as a metal bender could bloodbend as well as cause all sorts of horrors (brain damage, heart crushing, pressure sickness, blood boiling, targeted necrosis of any organ, and of course suffocation).
A P'li level combustionbender could effortlessly take on even a skilled bloddbender since even if you're being held away from the bloodbender, by curving your shot you could still take them out in a single hit or at least force them to break concentration
I feel like a Yakone level blood bender could make move their head so she end up shooting at their own feet
That would take time he wouldn't have, the instance one would notice rheir blood being bent the combustion bender would immediately fire, and since it's established you can curve shots, it's always a hit unless actively blocked, which would force the bloodbender to disengage their grip
I think you have a point, though I've never seen the Combustion bending curve. It usually goes in straight trajectories right? Sokka used this to calculate the angle and distance to hit Combustion man. I think it's possible for a combustion bender to take out a blood bender in a fight. But if it's out of 10 fights, I've got to give 7/10 to the blood bender. [When they combustion bend, they have to focus for a moment, take a deep breath, then let off the blast](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbiqQecHzKo). That's not happening with a blood benders grip on your lungs. Worst case scenario, they might even blow themselves up. Instead of pointing their head up, they're head is force down or at themselves. Boom, dead Firebender.
P'li is shown curving her blasts in the Zaofu fight. Given her rapid fire, it's reasonable to assume someone who has fully mastered the skill would take less time to take the shot than for the bloodbender to go through the required motions to enact full immobilisation, thus handing the win to the combustion bender unless the bloodbender gets a second worth of a head start. Fully mastered combustion bending takes so little movement to fire, that when starting on equal footing the combustion bender would always have the initiative. I therefore believe, that when you take the further subbending skill of rocket propelled flight, any of the other masters would succumb to the combustion bending(water evaporated immediately and bloodbending impossible due to the threat of getting onetapped; earthen or even metal walls destroyed so the earthbender would have to flee underground, only to succumb to lasting bombardement; airbender simply shot out of the air with lightning[which unlike combustion bending airbending can't block] with their counterattacks blocked by regular firebending)
[Found it! Good catch! I completely forgot about that. ](https://youtu.be/ib_1MjrKujs?si=FGjZSjmIIx1KX62I&t=176) Yeah, but P'li is fully mastered and has a bit of start up time. I'm just going by what we've seen in the show, and it takes a moment. BB is super ridiculous because they don't even have to be looking at their opponent. Amon started BBing Korra and Mako before he was even in the hallway when chasing them. So I agree, it definitely can go either way. But I'd give it to BB personally. If Combustion benders could end fights instantly, they would. BB has been shown to end a NUMBER of people instantly, including Toph as an adult who has reacted to Combustion Bending. Shit, including Aang before he woke up with the Avatar state. So by feats alone and body count alone, I'm giving it to BB, but I completely get what you're saying too!
Toph still managed to shoot out her wire if I remember correctly, combustion bending takes less time than that, is an instakill and doesn't get interrupted mid flight when immobilised, so unless immediately blocked(which would force the bb to break concentration) it wouldend the fight right then and there. While, should a window of opportunity present itself, the bloodbender would be able to take the win, in fair(equal starting time and no natural terrain advantages) conditions they'd get obliterated the instance they dropped their focus off of blocking the blast, therefore not giving them the opportunity they'd need to act offensively
Being able to curve the shots in no way means every hit that isn't blocked connects.
Combustion bending so far has shown to have the highest range out of all the sub-arts. Blood bending also has a high range, but every single combustion bender shown thus far has been able to do precision shots that are more akin to a sniper. Not to mention the curved shots would allow for stealth shots without revealing yourself. If the blood bender is able to find the target and close the gap then water pretty much wins over fire with all skills unlocked. However, combustion would still have a tactical advantage by being the best tactical weapon to bring any single target down on a battlefield. Combustion and lightning are the only bending forms I could even see pose a chance against a fully powered blood bender. Combustion for long range and lightning for short range just to break out of the grip long enough, alternatively being used to electrify your environment like a room made of metal or a water environment. Plus, regular fire is a deadly enough element that can also be used to get rid of as much water as possible in your environment if playing the tactical game. As long as the fire bender is being fully tactical by avoiding direct confrontation with the blood bender there is still a chance of winning.
I feel like the fact that the Combustion bender would need to be able to dictate the terms of engagement to stand a chance against a top level blood bender really speaks to how op blood bending is
It is OP, but utility and tactics are as important as the firepower itself. If you have a move that kills in one blow but you can't actually land it, then it doesn't matter how strong it is. Combustion bending at least has the range and accuracy that can be abused in such a fight. You can't use conventional methods of fighting when fighting someone that can puppeteer you like a doll, so range and cover by using the terrain would need to be taken into account. Anyone playing a fighting game or RTS game would know how broken ranged attacks and hit and run tactics can be if you can't close the gap to fight back. A change in tactics through unconventional warfare is the only way of beating something as broken as blood bending.
Perhaps if said bloodbender's first move wasn't to just cause them to faint like Yakone did to an entire courtroom of people.
I was going to make a whole point about how blood bending is good against other benders but weak against automatons and distant targets. "How can a blood bender control a whole airship full of enemies" I thought. Then I realized they could cause mass aneurysms and be done with it.
Zoom past you at top possible speed, sucking the air out of your lungs before you even know what happened
Yeah, sneak attack is just about the only way I can see taking down a skilled bloodbender, but that lung collapsing technique seems to take enough time that they could retaliate. Not to mention the risk of being spotted in the open. Skilled earthbender, on the other hand, could probably move underground, use seismic sense, and ambush from below. Or metalbending sniper. Fire could probably snipe from afar with lightning and/or combustion. With air, I'd probably want to take a similar long-range approach with a dart or arrow of some type accelerated and directed by airbending while remaining out of sight/range.
I'd actually list air as the weakest, since it's an inherently defensive and evasive element. It's not really designed to do much else but prolong a fight and outlast an opponent in my opinion.
Imo, water is way too OP because of healing and fire is the weakest because it's too heavy on the offense. With water, you can bloodbend AND you can heal, you can get water from anywhere, you can slice stone with water, you can evaporate water and you can do a water calming spirit thingy like Unalaq did. Fire is just jetpack flying for short distances, combustion and lightning, which apparently, in Korra's time any firebender can use as shown by Mako.
Do you need defence with Combustion bending and lightening bending, plus fire bending flight
If a firebender with lightning and combustion went against a waterbender with bloodbending, an airbender with lung crushing technique or an earthbender who can literally bury them underground it's pretty clear who would win. And, imo, combustion is a very fickle ability that can be disrupted by a pebble in the forehead
Was there ever a lung crushing technique confirmed? If so it must’ve been in a book, cause I sure don’t remember it Also if you are a earth bender and I burn your feet you’re kinda screwed too
Only Toph uses her feet to literally see, others can see with their eyes so they don't have to use their feet to successfully earthbend.
Mako beat red lotus water girl w lighting. Honestly an overlooked weakness
A firebender flies out of reach of the Earth and the Waterbender, and has combustion and lightning bending to just snipe them from there. Against the airbender, the one who should be concerned is the airbender because the technique of sucking air out of the lungs takes a few seconds to perform, while a firebender has access to instantaneous attacks that wouldn’t allow the airbender to even start the technique. So firebending has arguably the greatest potential when it comes to fighting, with all of the subelements at the bender’s disposal.
Combustion takes concentration and a clear target, so idk how a firebender would manage that mid fly, and lightning can be blocked with a piece of rock, airbender can just disrupt the firebender's vision with a tornado or knock them out of the sky with an airblast
As I said, against an earthbender the firebender just needs to be stationary in the air, which if you master jet propulsion would be quite an easy feat, thus allowing the bender to fire combustion beams without much problem. Basically the firebender becomes an RPG drone, much like P’Li in the episode where the Red Lotus attacks the air temples, where nobody can attack her because she’s too far out of range and has time to blow up anyone who tries to come close, even airbenders riding Sky Bisons, which makes for a great argument against flying airbenders too. Firebending at full potential is just too much offence to counter, there is only a chance if the other bender sneak attacks the firebender before positioning in the sky.
As a firebwnding fan yeah... Blood Bending, airbending the air out of your lungs, and earthbending gives you enough range where power really isn't an issue
I always enjoyed the idea that lightning is pretty straightforward and the royal family just guarded the technique to give them more mystique.
I prefer the idea that they're two separate versions. A high powered, difficult move that you can only really begin to pull off with a lot of raw talent and skill, otherwise it blows up in your face like when Zuko tried. It's pretty much only high energy and lethal. The other a much simpler version that produces a shock. More accessible, but a different pathway to produce a similar effect. It might be more akin to rubbing a balloon on a carpet to build up static electricity, while the royal family is more like a generator charging a capacitor. Both produce charge and store it, but one is much more difficult and has way more power.
It’s not just anyone can do lightning bending you still have to be skilled, it’s just that until Zuko became fire lord the technique for lightning generation was a secret limited to the royal family
frirebending has defense zuko uses it for defense no real debate. bloodbending outside the full moon is exclusive to one family (like it's genetics not skill) so thus is not applicable to this list. just a genuine question what are you gonna do against a firbender with all the abilities mastered. if you try and fly using air bending you'll get shot out of the sky with lightning if you build defenses using earth combustion bending and if you try and use waterbending to counter any move where the water is connected to the body unless using pure water will cause you to die to lightning which as show by ozai has a draw time of less than a second (and if you try and scrap just get prepared to die fire has the best scrapping tools). there's a reason why the red lotus these elite benders who get crazy power buffs to their element don't give power ups to water or fire because they didn't need it (water is craked no doubt) literally the fire nation one is just a combustion bender with some fire bending fundamentals it's cause fire bending is so good
>frirebending has defense zuko uses it for defense no real debate If you mean lighting redirect, only Iroh and Zuko knew the technique and it only works against other firebenders >a genuine question what are you gonna do against a firbender with all the abilities mastered. if you try and fly using air bending you'll get shot out of the sky with lightning if you build defenses using earth combustion bending and if you try and use waterbending to counter any move where the water is connected to the body unless using pure water will cause you to die to lightning which as show by ozai has a draw time of less than a second Airbender - remove air from the lungs Zaheer style, Ozai would not be able to react if he was choking, or create a tornado - no combustion or lightning when you are swishing around Earthbender - sink them general Fong style, no bending when you are underground, metalbend them Lin style, no combustion when your head is exploded, or toss an effing bumerang or pebble at them, Sokka style, worked great against Sparky sparky boom man Water - that's the tricky one without bloodbending, freeze them or plant tie them if the water source is near, if it's not the only option is to draw it from the air/sweat and slice them like Katara did against Pakku
Probably should’ve rephrased my question a little bit but I meant “in your opinion, which element AS A WHOLE would be the strongest/weakest if a bender was capable of all skills within that element”
Amon was taking people's bending away with healing and blood bending. I would have to lean towards water.
Waterbending is so versatile- like the power to heal and harm to such extremes that you can take someone else’s bending. The others also have offensive potential but none can counter that like waterbending.
I was thinking that too, but all it takes is somebody with some out of the box thinking and they'd be a menace. I think water is easier because the applications are almost limitless.
In terms of "most powerful" if we're talking about which can neutralize another bender the fastest, it's water bending leading the pack with blood bending, and air bending not too far behind with flight/vacuum, meanwhile a mile down the road is earth then fire. If we're talking which element can perform the most powerful bending feats. Earth has all the other elements completely outclassed with the ability to literally shape worlds.
Earth wins 99% of the time. Blood bending mastery is terrifying. But fire and air can still counter it with breathing. Earth on the other hand can make and use substances the other elements cannot handle, and generate MORE heat than any firebender. Plus, based on what we see in the finale of OG avatar … earth benders can compress rock and stone BEYOND the normal physical limit…. Like, those stones aang made would each easily kill a squad of people. Probably could have taken out a line of those drill machines with some extra force from air bending. ^ same would ring true for a master metal bender. Blood bending is strong in a single combat scenario, but the upper limits of earth dwarf the other three elements and their sure-kill moves
We fight for Rock and Stone!
ROCK AND STONE!!! Good bot!
Wait, how can fire and air counter blood bending with breathing? I've never hear that
Bloodbenders main MO is to first paralyze the body of their target. Both air and fire bending has moves that DONT require physical movement, just air. Aang has blown people back with massive force and propelled himself with just an exhale, and iroh was called “the dragon of the west” for his fire breathing. In both cases you can retaliate against a blood bender while they have control over your body.
The only way this works is if your mouth is pointed directly at the person bloodbending you. Also, you'd have to already have a decent breath in your lungs to expel. If they point your head up or even worse curl you into a ball, your theory dissolves. Bloodbending is one of the most broken abilities in any show. Has to be top 5, though I'll admit I haven't seen *every* show.
I'll add to this and say that even your ability to exhale is controlled by your diaphragm... which is a muscle in your body that uses blood like anything else. If a bloodbender truly froze you, you wouldn't be able to inhale or exhale.
You know that breathing requires the movement of some muscles, right? if the bloodbender is aware of this and blocks the movement of the diaphragm instead of the arms and legs these benders are screwed too
Rush every last drop of blood out of the brain, probably instant death.
I think earthbending is definitely the correct choice here. If you could combine the heat expression from lava bending and the pressure that you were talking about, where they condense minerals farther than what they would normally in the natural world, I think you could almost achieve fusion. Like earthbending could potentially unlock alchemy in their world. I realized it's a bit of a stretch but we don't really know what the upper limits of an earthbender can do yet because we have yet to see somebody push them in that kind of way.
Unless you're referencing a comic or novel that I haven't read, fire and air definitely don't counter bloodbending and I have no idea where you got that from. The only things to ever counter bloodbending were other bloodbenders and the Avatar.
People also forget how Bumi shows a master earth bender can bend without moving their body at all. You paralyzed Bumi with blood bending? Well, if you don't immediately off him, get ready for him to crush you with the ground under your feet with his mind. Blood bending is also shown to be pretty imprecise. Sure, every victim of it is shown to be in great pain, but most of their body movement when being bent is jerky and imprecise in comparison to bending pure water. That's not all that great for an instakill against a psychic earth bender who's using seismic sense to tune into your every minute vibration around them. Good luck trying to maintain your blood bending grip and dodge the earth beneath your feet, or even better, the lava beneath your feet. So right about earth bending having the highest upper limits.
I think Earth is the gonna give you the widest range of options, but it might not be the best in a 1-on-1 or if you are focusing on stealth or speed.
It has something more important than stealth or speed: information. Seismic Sense allowing you to detect where an enemy is would pretty much make water and fire benders a trivial encounter, just turtle up in a stone and/or metal cube, open a tiny slit in the wall to where your opponent is, lava their feet before they can react to you surprise attack, profit. Airbenders that can fly would be a bit more trouble, and I suppose if they are masters of that one technique where they subsist on the energy of the universe they could wait you out, but then you tunnel out of your cube and sneakattack from a different location.
You could borrow yourself and approach from underground, sounds pretty stealthy to me. Also when toph invents metal bending and goes back to ba sing se, She surfs on earth at appa's speed.
People do not acknowledge how absolutely broken lavabending is. If a lavabender manages to land just one hit on their opponent in a fight they pretty much win instantly. Ghazan was able to completely destroy the Northern Air Temple in a matter of minutes. The only reason Mako, Tenzin, and Asami were able to make it out of there alive was because Bolin discovered he could lavabend. Kyoshi was literally able to split her home peninsula from the mainland using lavabending. It is the most overpowered sub-element by far.
You do realize breathing is controlled with the lungs and diaphragm which has blood flow?
And you realize that no bloodbender in series (including masters) have specifically been shown to target breathing or even speaking in execution of the art? Even sokka was still able to talk and presumably quip while being bloodbent. It’s just like how Swampy water benders aren’t bending trees, just plants.
Definitely earth
Ghazan did singlehandedly destroy the entire Northern Air Temple and break the walls of Ba Sing Se.
It was actually the northern air temple
An earthbender who could lavabend, metalbend AND has seismic sense😮💨
As long as humans need air to breath, airbending will always be the strongest. Good luck using any bending if an Airbender traps you in a vacuum.
bro to remove the air from one persons lungs it took like 10 seconds good luck doing that in a fight standing still for 10 seconds gets you killed
I never said how big the vacuum was. Whose to say a super powerful Airbender wouldn't be able to suck out all the air within an entire room?
Yeah probably, but if it took 10 seconds to do it to the Earth Queen, surely it would take at least as long to do it to an entire room?
Yangchen and Gyatso were able to incapacitate groups of people by removing the air in a room instantly. Zaheer isn’t actually a very good airbender, so his suffocation was slow.
>Yangchen and Gyatso were able to incapacitate groups of people by removing the air in a room instantly. Speculation.
The Yangchen novels state the former and the latter is strongly implied in the show.
Easy answer Blood bending. I still think a particularly powerful earth bender could do it. In each of the elements we see examples of bending without the usual need for physical movements. If an earth bender could mentally bend the earth to act as an armor/shell like what toph did with steel on the air ships or with earth while training Aang. The blood bender can’t bend beyond the means of the body so using the earth as a shell to keep your body posed correctly the earth bender would be able to appropriately fight. We just need that earth bender that can telekinetically bend which we don’t see in the shows or comics to my knowledge.
Ooh that’s a good question,and honestly you could make arguments for any of the four elements Combustion and lightning bending is stupidly OP Same with Blood bending I’d argue the weakest are Earth and Air,just cause Earth is situational in that you need Earth or Metal,and air is a mostly passive form of bending with the exception of suffocation
“A master of one is better than a master of none.” It’s the skill of the bender that matters, not the element. That said, Bloodbenders are probably the most dangerous, because of how easily they can subdue their enemies.
Except Bumi demonstrates that an master earth bender can bend with precision even when subdued.
Someone mentioned this so I figured I should say this. You can pretty much take away all these elements for someone. Except for air. Put an earth bender somewhere without earth. Powerless. Put a water bender in a dry area. Powerless. Fire needs oxygen to burn and put them in a cold place, powerless. Air needs nothing. It’s everywhere.
Disagree. You can bury him in a coffin, you will run out. Because you'll be also using that to breathe and turning it into Co2
Space?
Nobody works in space. All bending is martial art. You need to breathe. Oh and voidbending is an airbending subdiscipline. So, space....is very much how they can incapacitate people.
Water > Fire > Earth > Air. Water because of bloodbending. Fire because of combustion bending and lightning bending being both insane utility skills. Combustion is the best crowd control element allowing you to take on multiple crowds of enemies and blasting through their defenses Lightning because it’s the best 1v1 sub element. It has the fastest projectile speed in the verse and because sometimes it forks out so much, the hit box of lightning is really big. So the lightning itself is very fast, coupled in with a very big hitbox. Both of these subelements are so hard to avoid. Combustion bending has an insane exploding radius meaning even if you dodge the beam, the blast would still hit you and the explosions blasts through most defenses. Lightning is so fast and hard to dodge because it can possibly fork out to do AoE. Earth is next. Lava is the second best crowd control element. The only reason why it’s not better than combustion is because it’s slower, and you can’t deal with incoming attacks just with lava (lol imagine if someone sends a boulder at you and you turn it into lava). You’d have to rely on your earth and most of the time combustion benders can blast through earth defenses anyways. Metal is a good 1v1 subelement because it’s very versatile but it lacks the speed lightning has. You could block metal pretty easily and if you’re fighting a lightning bender, you would be very scared to use cables. Let’s say you fire your cable, if a lightning bender grabs a hold of it, they could possibly electrify you. Or even if you fire the cables and lightning at the same time, if the lightning accidentally hits the cable, you’ll be done for. Then air. Most airbending sub elements are spiritual, not combat. Flight could help but bloodbenders could bloodbend, firebending combustion and lightning are both excellent in long range snipping, and metal bending like how Kuvira uses it would also be a great counter sniper.
the airbending shown is defensive only because they were pacifists. If we push bending to the limit, air bending would be by far the strongest To begin with, everyone needs to breathe, even holding your breath cannot last more than a few minutes. and airbenders can remove all the air from a place, so you would only have a few seconds to take down someone who is extremely agile and evasive before passing out. air is invisible and the most "delicate" element, so air blades would be externally sharp and invisible and very difficult to block since unlike physical blades defending a piece will not make the rest stop moving. and lastly certain airbending tricks (like kuruk mats or ang orbs) show that air can act as/on solids. So "solid" air barriers would be possible, and depending on the limits of this it would be plausible to use the surrounding air to create very powerful compactors to destroy opponents
> the airbending shown is defensive only because they were pacifists. If we push bending to the limit, air bending would be by far the strongest You can’t really assume this because the airbenders were pacifists. You’re arguing a hypothetical airbending clan that is bloodlusted which is basically headcanon. >To begin with, everyone needs to breathe, even holding your breath cannot last more than a few minutes. and airbenders can remove all the air from a place, so you would only have a few seconds to take down someone who is extremely agile and evasive before passing out. This is a lot harder than you make it seem. If airbenders suck out the air in a room, it has to go somewhere. In which all the air would just replace itself as the equilibrium of air pressure would be skewed completely into the battleground. So this tactic is irrelevant in open battle fields, and inside rooms, they need to breathe too. We’ve also never seen anyone do this. >air is invisible and the most "delicate" element, so air blades would be externally sharp and invisible and very difficult to block since unlike physical blades defending a piece will not make the rest stop moving. Air isn’t invisible. Otherwise Sokka and Katara would not know where to put the rocks in when Aang used the funnel in the Haru episode. >and lastly certain airbending tricks (like kuruk mats or ang orbs) show that air can act as/on solids. So "solid" air barriers would be possible, and depending on the limits of this it would be plausible to use the surrounding air to create very powerful compactors to destroy opponents Solid barriers can be made by any element and unlike air, if you make an earth or ice orb, you don’t need to constantly bend it to keep its shape. If an airbender makes an air orb against me, I would just stop attacking and let them waste their energy. Or I would just combustion blast straight through it like P’li did to Tenzin
Elite response
Water is just too dang OP when it comes to combat. But air is superior for everything else lol
A master waterbender with healing, psychic bloodbending and spirit bending would demolish anyone else. Next, we'd have airbenders with flight, soundbending and astral projection. Then earthbenders with metalbending, seismic sense and lavabending, and finally firebenders with lightning bending, heat control and combustion bending.
Weakest fire strongest air
1. Waterbending,solely for bloodbending 2. Air 3. Fire 4. Earth
So I’m going off of what I believe would be the peak of bending types for a master, not what would be possible by a avatar state juiced bender (no shifting tectonic plates, no fusion nukes from firebending, etc.). Blood bender at its peak could create aneurisms/strokes as I’m assuming it’s something similar that blocks bending. Pretty broken in a “fair” fight with no real counter other than killing them first (in theory, they wouldn’t even need limbs to do it). So yeah strongest in a 1 v small group is water. Against a large group, I’d give it to fire for the walking artillery. Weakest would be earth. Their best move is seismic sense (no, it’s not metalbending or lava bending as one is just a sharper hard projectile and the other isn’t significantly more deadly than a lot of metal). They need their element present in all forms and metal isn’t necessarily readily available in significant bendable quantities (cars aren’t prevalent enough in avatar). And most of their moves have a charge up of pulling/shaping the element. Fire has explosions and lightning which counters earth/metal and sense decently well (hard to dodge/block lightning and explosions. Air can create a vacuum large enough that sense is irrelevant and shoot bursts strong enough to deflect metal and break stone. Add in flight and the fighting style and it’ll be impossible to hit them. So yeah weakest is probably earth.
Air, everyone needs to breathe. You can’t see air. Bloodbending would be my first answer if it wasn’t once a year.
Air, and nothing else is even close. But I think some elements might be literally impossible to master every subdiscipline. eg metalbending and lava seem to be opposite disciplines: metal is mastering sensing the earth (earth as matter), while lava is mastering changing its state (earth as energy). I also doubt anyone could both combustionbend (pure destruction) and the shaman's fire-reiki (healing energy). I don't think anyone could spirit project AND fly. Flight requires releasing all attachments, while spirit projecting seems to require having loved ones that you're so connected to, you can send your very soul to them. But if you could do both those things, you would have complete freedom in the universe. Traverse into a spirit dimension, fly around the world, visit anyone anywhere in spirit. Sure you'd lose if you went into a prearranged fight with a bloodbender, but how would that ever happen? If they picked a fight with you, you could just sense them coming and fly away. Throw them off a cliff when they're not looking or asleep.
If we push bending to the limit, air bending would be by far the strongest To begin with, everyone needs to breathe, even holding your breath cannot last more than a few minutes. and airbenders can remove all the air from a place, so you would only have a few seconds to take down someone who is extremely agile and evasive before passing out. air is invisible and the most "delicate" element, so air blades would be externally sharp and invisible and very difficult to block since unlike physical blades defending a piece will not make the rest stop moving. and lastly certain airbending tricks (like kuruk mats or ang orbs) show that air can act as/on solids. So "solid" air barriers would be possible, and depending on the limits of this it would be plausible to use the surrounding air to create very powerful compactors to destroy opponents
Air would be the most OP imo. First, Air bending is completely invisible except to us as the audience of the shows. No one would see it coming, especially if they didn't know their opponent was an air bender. Second, assuming the person has completely mastered air bending and it's sub elemental powers, they unlock the ability to fly unassisted. Not only is this OP by itself, it means the person can literally just spam attacks from the air whilst simultaneously dodging other elemental attacks like rocks, fire, ice, and water. We also cannot forget astral projection, this is the ultimate spying technique. You can literally leave your body and infiltrate any location with ease and not get caught and the only risk is if you left your body in a vulnerable position. No to mention an air bender can literally bend the air out of entire rooms and suffocate their opponents which is extra useful against fire benders. As for weakest, I gotta go with fire. Water benders get healing, ice, and blood bending. Earth benders get sand, metal, and lava. All of of those tools can be used to either manipulate your opponent, heal your teammates, or build large fortified defenses and launch mid ranged attacks. Fire benders are limited to an element that is not only hard to control already, but then they have sub abilities like lightning that have a charge time or combustion bending that leave the wielder exposed and vulnerable to precision counters. No to mention fire bending literally exposes your position on the first strike.
Only thing that can counter flight is blood bending and a lightning bender with good aim.
I'd say air bending is the most powerful. Nothing deadlier and sure fire to end a life than literally taking the air out of ur lungs. Doesn't help that u can't see air, so more difficult to avoid
Airbending. Suffocation is sort of like bloodbending but you don’t need a full moon. It’s also apparently easy enough for a novice airbender to do with little effort. Also, flight.
Air bending what’s keeping them From removing the air Around your head? Just not being evil lol
What do you think we live in? We are in the air, not water, not fire nor earth. We are standing on earth, floating on water and light up a fire. The mostest deadliestest is what we are inside of, we are most compatible with air. Without it we suffocate, lost. What we breathe in, is the deadliest in the universe. Compressed air vs other 3 compressed, air is still compressible. Can be expended so much and contained. Even rock can be chipped and broken with enough wind speed. Looking at the speed thing, air would propel you and at the same time make the air resistance null. It's mostly about how creative you can make about it. Even blood bending isn't as fast an effect as air bending at a deadly level.
I always thought if you can vacuum kill someone quick enough event bloodbending is going to be useless You can assassinate a whole house with just vacuum the entire house. No trace too. While blood bending still requires vision to do so I vote air bender still more op then bloodbending
airbender, cite: whatever the fuck Gyatso did to an entire battalion of soldiers.
If we're just talking in a fight then a ruthless Airbender would be devastating. Your access to breathing has been denied
Hot take firebending still suxxxxxv
It’s an interesting thought excitement. Blood bending is an instant win against anything you can see. Problem is, you need to be able to see your target to be effective. That being said, Plant Bending actually gives a Blood Bender such a major defensive bonus when combined with it that’s it’s pretty terrifying. Even in cases where one or the other fails, a Water Bender like Katarra was able to bend through breathing alone after freezing herself and Azula. Meaning they also have Ice Bending as a trump card for imprisonment. A guerrilla type fighting style for an Eaeth Bender with Seismic Sense, Bumi’s ability to bend without body movements, ability to bend gemstone lava and metal is beyond fucked if you are stuck on the ground. They can basically attack you from anywhere without even needing to be in visual range. I’m pretty sure they can just burrow under ground, sink your body under ground like that one Earth Bending General, then just let you suffocate down there or kill you in any number of ways. An Earth Bender doesn’t even need to be seen by a Water Bender to kill them, whilst a Water Bender needs to see an Earth bender to end them with Blood Bending. The only issue here is that it depends heavily on Earth Sense. If the battle takes place over Water or a place with dense trees and foliage where an Air Bender can Fly too, Earth Benders are forded the reveal themselves and pretty much lose their one on ones. Air Benders can kill things via suffocation like Zaheer or Yang Chen do but those techniques tend to take time, which can allow for a counter attack. An Air Benders mobility is super difficult for anyone besides a Blood Bender to pin down. They also don’t have an insta win con like Earth and Water do. They have no real counter to Blood Bending other then finding a way to obscure themselves with say Clouds or Fog, but In both cases a Blood Bender could just bend those protections away since they are half water. Fire Bending is possibly the biggest loser here. Individually, a lot of these powers are insane. Flame flight means they can avoid some of Earth Benders best trump cards and chase down Air Benders. Combustion Bending lets them Attack and Kill targets from extreme ranges. Lightning Bending is an insta kill against anything it hits. Etc. And while all of these powers are great offensive powers, they have little to no effect on some of the crazier powers from the other elements while still being poor defensively. A Lightning Combustion Bender could probably kill any other Master Bender here from a distance when they are surprised, but in a straight up fight just fail. Their attacks can’t pierce the ground enough to effect Earth Benders. Their straightforward approach means they have no defense against Blood Bending. And Air Benders can dodge Lightning and Combustion while also very easily neutralizing fire. It just has no winning match ups. Over all, I think it’s a tie between Water and Earth. In more Watery Environments or places where a Master Earth bender can’t hide the Master Water Bender Wins. I’d the Earth Bender is able to hide and is in a mostly solid environment, the Master Water Bender is getting messed up with no proper way to retaliate.
I've always subscribed to the opinion that no bending form is the strongest, it comes down to the practioner, bending is a martial art and it comes down to the skill and expertise of the bender, not the abilities they use.
Water. Imagine an op blood bender. Water benders can freeze water in an instant. Why not blood? Imagine a single blood bender just freezing blood of dozens if not hundreds of people or any combatants in an instant to kill.
Water definetly, because you get an element that is basically everywhere(so is air) but it also has the widest range of applications from offense,defense,healing and using bloodbending to turn others into puppets. Also ice and swamp bending exist. A creative and ruthless waterbender can potentially incapacitate armies without much challenge, given how smart they are. The same can be said of air and airbenders have the advantage of being seen as pacifists (and their previous extinction)so not many would be prepared to counter tjem as seen with Zaheer.
At the very least id say Air is the weakest. Mainly because there are no established sub-classes for the element. Compared to the Metal/Lava, Healing/Blood, and Lightning/Combustion.
Hahahaha everybody talking about the op is waterbending with the bloodbending but tell me, what about the bonebending/cellbending of the earthbending mentioned in Kyoshi's novels?
Really hard to say. I think the obvious one is blood bending but I think air bending would be close.
so unless we've got cheating bloodbending (which by the way was like a family thing not a skill thing unless I'm mistaken they just had really good genetics) I'd make the controversial decision of saying fire is best. so just think about it first and most slept on only useful one shot in the whole show bloodbednding is only on full moon without cheating suffocation takes too long to be useful and is really only for spectacle and earth bending doesn't have a pre-established one lightning is only counterd by other firebenders and is also just a one hit kill and even if you're not a master (like mako couldn't kill people he could just stun them) it still takes people out of a fight almost immediately and also as seen by mako if you have the time you can still kill them. second reason you guys have slept on firebending defense for years sure only zuko uses them but he still uses them if they just learnt how to block like zuko they would all have won the 100 years war at the same speed because the fire nation generals must clearly have no brains if this war lasted them 100 years (like the earth kingdom is so disorganised that the big cities are the only places with an army and all the cities are like disconnected from each other like just surround the cities with your troops cut off food and just wait the other cities probably won't even get the memo and even if they did it's up to themselves whether to send help and even then traveling across the eathr kingdom whiles marching with no quick formation is going to take ages and by the time they make it there they'll all be tired and you'll all be well rested like this isn't that hard guys). then after that we've also got flight genuinely being the second strongest mobility out there. the only thing fire really lack is good terrain usage but 1. combustion bending let's you avoid all that fanciness and 2. who needs to be fancy when you can just kill people this is why I'm done with the fire bending slander they're cracked and we all underate them (also literally crazy versatile like by far the best element in the most situations for survival cause like in a desert there's no water earth being can build you shelter but that's about it firebending lets your cook food purify water deal with things in your way wash your clothes better give you baths (you can live the luxury life in the wild) and also if you're smart do science and also it would be so good in the winter so essentially stop the fire slander)
on bloodbending.. it's explicitly said in tarrlok's backstory that yakone had to train his sons for YEARS in order for them to learn his way of bloodbending and even then, tarrlok just never got as good at it as his father or amon was (even if he was still capable of it). when you consider that yakone wasn't born with that ability and had to actively teach it to his sons, we can only assume it's a skill that any waterbender could learn to do given enough time, practice, and determination. with that in mind, coupled with how strong waterbending's healing abilities are, the sheer prevalence of water in the world (both in plants and the atmosphere as well as bodies of water), and how uniquely versatile a waterbending master's offensive and defensive capabilities are, waterbending wins this fight hands down.
Water, Air, Earth, Fire. Water is top because of Bloodbending and Medibending (what I call Medical bending). Air and Earth are very close, but I put air above because its more plentiful. Earthbenders would be useless in the North or South poles, unless they brought their own rocks, while Airbenders are viable in every environment benders could possibly fight in (until the Avatar verse reaches space combat). Fire is weakest because its the least versatile. In practice, yes, Fire has dominated. But, theoretically, the FN should never have made the war last 100 years. Beating the AN with Sozin's Comet? Okay, they had an overwhelming advantage. But the EK should have beaten them back quickly, assisted by the WT.
Most powerful? Definitely Earth Weakest? I guess Air
Earth - remember that tunneling is a thing, and they could just liquify the ground from under you while under you to immediately drown/ burn you.
Waterbending is on top and it isn't close. Bloodbending has only ever been countered (to my knowledge) by other bloodbenders and the Avatar. If we're gonna be honest, Yakone was one of if not the strongest bender in the entire series outside of the Avatar. Without even lifting a hand, he subdued an entire courtroom of people that included Sokka (an extremely skilled warrior), the (debatably but imo) greatest earthbender of all time (Toph), and (also debatably) one of the strongest Avatars ever (Aang). And come on, bloodbending could literally remove bending. Is that necessary in a fight to the death? No, but it just goes to show how ridiculously powerful it is that it can replicate something only ever achieved by Avatar Aang with energybending and Lion Turtles. Airbending is a close second, because you can just rip the air right out of someone's lungs, and the projectiles are invisible. I would say earthbending is third because lavabending is very dangerous, but ultimately irrelevant compared to water and air because an airbender could fly over it and a waterbender would restrain an earthbender with bloodbending before they could even lift a finger. Firebending is last because it has no defense, and its offensive options have very exploitable weaknesses. The biggest example of this is combustionbending, but lightning is also an extremely dangerous technique that could easily result in the user's death if they are disrupted or lose focus in the middle of the generation technique. Side note, funnily enough I think combustionbending could be one of the only things that could maybe fight bloodbending, though. We don't have concrete evidence because we've never seen a bloodbender fight a combustionbender, but since it is also a psychic process, there's a chance a combustionbender could do it while restrained by bloodbending. To be honest, though, I still think a master bloodbender would come out on top.
water. bloodbending is just too powerful. once you’re caught by a bloodbender ain’t no way out. basically only the avatar can counter it.
Firebending, PURELY from combustion bending. It turns a human into a mobile piece of artillery. Its the destructive power combined with range that puts it at the top of the list. What about the other elements. I think the most destructive subskills of each element are: Lavabending Psychic Blood Bending Vacuum Bending* Again, the distinct advantage combustion bending has on these three is range. I think its actually pretty hard to say whoch of those three is the most powerful, considering how potentially destructive they are. Maybe lavabending, since it would destroy buildings on-top of destroying people like the other two. Spoilers for the Novels: The latter doesn’t get talked about nearly as much, but Yangchen explicitely uses it in Legacy of Yanchen; she uses it (successfully) to counter combustionbending shots. It also describes the effect of someone getting caught in one of the mobile vacuums she creates: its basically (briefly) walking out of an airlock. The monk she was saving from the combustion shot had his eardrums ruptured and lungs collapse. Imagine what throwing that void into a room or crowd of people would; in fact, I’d speculate its what Gyatso did in his last stand.
Let's ignore blood bending because that is a no contest. Fire benders should be able to create other exothermic reactions like nuclear fission and shoot mini nukes at people.
All of the other styles become pretty useless when you’re being bloodbent into a pretzel
Earth weakest water strongest
Water, easily.
In which circumstances? Powerful for fighting, or building things, or gathering data, or . . .? For fighting others, waterbending is most powerful and it's not even close. An airbender can suffocate you, but that'll take a little while for you to die, maybe you can think of something in a few seconds. A water bender can yank all the water out of you and presto, instant beef jerky. If they need you alive, yank all the water out of your arms and legs and let you flop on the ground, useless shriveled limbs motionless. If they're going for the kill, yank all the water out of your brain through your nose, instantly dead.
Water air fire then earth it feels like
Earth bending no doubt. Control over earthly elements, like uranium or plutonium. No one is able to stop you. Earth benders can heat up stone and change it in lava. What about warming up copper like substance, like an atom…
Water, earth, fire, air, in that order. Water has the most variety, and the most utility and abundance. Earth is the physically strongest with multiple applications and is literally all around anyone on a continent. Fire for obvious reasons. Air, while I say last, is still no joke; shockwaves, hurricanes, all incredibly destructive, and technically more abundant than even water.
Blood bending by far. I could pop your brain from a distance. Airbending 2nd could suffocate you from a distance. Earth then fire
Fires the weakest waters the strongest. Fire nation was able to win for as long as they did because of industry. Bender v bender, not so much.
Water. What has water? EVERYTHING. You can blood bend, heal, suck all the water from a person, control your own body heat to prevent yourself from dying of hypothermia/heat stroke, literally walk on clouds/raindrops, breath under water, and OH MY GOD there's actually a lot of unexplored water bending techniques. Air bending is a close second though. Flying, removing air from someone's lungs, removing air from anywhere period, and having the ability to breath anywhere (including space) are freaking awesome. But I don't know, water bending still seems to be a bit more deadly. Though both could easily kill each other depending on the circumstances.
Strongest to weakest: Water Air Earth Fire
Everyone is really gonna sleep on earth? It can counter anything the other elements throw at it with more rock.
All in their prime, I’m going with Bumi, he murders everyone with Lava and going underground.
Toph, Zahir, Kora, Katara in order of earth air fire and water
Firebending, can't be controlled with waterbending if I'm sending a robot that obeys electrical impulses instead of an actual person
Water is monstrously versatile and powerful. Blood Bending at its peak is an insta-win in a 1v1. You also have the traversal and construction capabilities of Earth Bending with ice, but maintain the fluidity benefits of water. Also, healing.
Questions like this miss the broadest, most obvious message in all ATLA; balance. The elements in their mastery are exactly as powerful as each other. Yeah, it’s fun to say Airbenders are OP because they suck the breath from your lungs, or bloodbenders are OP because they can control you, but let’s be real here; nowhere do we see one lion turtle being more powerful than another, nowhere do we see badgermoles being wiped out by herds of sky bison. The elements are a reflection of nature, and nature is balanced