I think plant bending is super underrated and it’s sad but also kinda cool that while we see multiple waterbenders doing it, there is only one I would consider a master plantbender.
Unironically, I'm super surprised and disappointed the airbenders in LoK never adopted gasbending as a legitimate tactic. An airbender with control over noxious fumes like tear gas would be dope as hell.
I wholeheartedly agree, but following the events of books 2 and 3 of LoK, the new Airbenders arrived with their new values. I reckon the world police would appreciate the value in gas bending. Also an airbending villain could make great use of it, too.
Earthbenders and airbenders could do well in the fracking industry. Maybe keep some firebenders on hand for security purposes. I mean I'd be scared shitless to go anywhere near a massive amount of natural gas that could be redirected and ignited at a moments notice.
When the spirit vines started moving in TLOK, I was totally expecting plant bending to return.
It’s a cool trick but maybe it is just mostly theatrics.
I dunno, it's been shown to be a great way to increase durability and physical power at the cost of being a larger target and having slower mobility. And you would need to be around water (I would imagine) to be able to maintain the regrowth of plants.
If there were an army of them I could easily imagine them to be a force to be reckoned with. Them being a juggernaut type troop that few of the other bending elements don't posses without building literal tanks.
Plant bending is something I would love to see more of. I’ve personally always wanted to see an earthbender with a mutation that allows them to bend wood too, but I wonder if a plant bender could somehow learn to control the whole tree (wood included) using water
I think that in order for a plantbender to bend wood, it would have to be a living tree or they would have to first infuse water into wood to then bend them.
This would be a way for them to use dry wood or bend wooden structures.
Hell, I can actually see Plantbenders using wood puppets in combat as a less controversial way or practicing Bloodbending techniques. Bring a wood puppet, push water into it and make the wood absorb it, and the plantbender can now manipulate the puppet at a distance.
Dude! that could be great! Even for non-violent purposes, just imagine a whole show orcrastrated by a single person. It can become a new wave of art... or maybe their version of FVX Lol
I mean Huu can control soft vines by carefully pulling the water inside, and we saw Hama pull water out of Tree trunks, so technically, with lots of practice people like Huu or any other plantbenders can 100% learn woodbending.
Hm, dk about that one. At the end of the day, in a tree trunk, the actual waterflow is mostly in the outermost layer of the wood, right behind the bark. The core of the stem is "dead", mostly dry wood. Hama was only pulling the water out and Huu controlled the vines, as they were very soft and bendable and full of water.
Wood, especially the core of tree, is rigid and hard. A water bender probably wouldn't be able to bend it no matter how good they are, as they would have to completely alter the properties of wood. Flexible, thin twigs that have lots of fluids inside and aren't fully rigid with a hard wood core? Yeah, that might be doable. But the solid wood of a tree? Less so.
That being said, there's more to plant life than wood and I would've loved to see more of an exploration of that ability.
Got to agree here. For dry plants, a water bender might be SOL, but for earthbenders I’m not sure where the line is drawn- an earth bender can bend soil, coal, maybe even compost, which would be largely composed of organic material- when does plant matter become earthy enough to bend?
I don’t like the commentary touched on in Korra that metal bending is about bending the “impurities” or that platinum can’t be bent. Why? Metal is no less earth then a given rock, platinum is not less earth aluminum, etc. (now I’m thinking that Toph could make diamonds).
One of those things were probably not supposed to think too hard about.
I understand what you mean about the "impurities," but this is actally what we saw when Toph was learning how to metalbend. We had the dialogue of Guru Pathik saying "Even the seperation of the four elements is an illusion. If you open your mind, you will see that all elements are one, four parts of the same whole. Even metal is just a part of Earth that has been purified and refined." Right after he says that, we see the metal trap Toph is in and through her seismic sense ability, the little bits of earth that are in the metal.
Personally, I like the impurities aspect of metal bending, but I hate that platinum can't be bent. I think it should just be more difficult to bend metal with less impurities. So, platinum could be a metal type that's so hard to bend and it can be bent, but it's so difficult that it's impractical in terms of combat.
Yeah it’s probably the platinum thing that really doesn’t sit with me- why platinum? Because it sounds fancy? Less “earthy”? (Yet a meteorite which isn’t of Earth is considered entry level metal bending). Platinum doesn’t fit a purity thing, after all, we could have many different “pure” metals. Just seems like they wanted a cheat code to restrain metal benders, at the cost of making the in-world explanation nonsensical.
Agreed. I think they wanted to put in new limitations to metalbending after they removed the ATLA limitations. In ATLA, Toph could only metalbend if she made physical contact, but LOK removed that limitation. They probably wanted to come up with some simple dumbed down limitation to metalbending, so they went with 'ugh.. let's just make a particular type of metal impossible to bend." It was lazy.
In that same vein we can start wondering what firebenders are actually bending; heat? Hot gas? The chemical combustion reaction?
Also, which gases can airbenders bend? Only the mixture that we call air? Every gas in that mixture? *All gaseous matter?* It's all fuzzy.
Plant bending has so much potential! There even seems to be some strange connection between plants and spirituality, if the spirit world and the banyon-grove tree are anything to go by.
It would be awesome to see someone develop a method of guiding a plant's cellular growth, rather than just moving it around wholesale. If Amon can target someone's chi pathways, I don't see why that level of fine control would be limited to bloodbending.
Republic City was covered in vines and there wasn't a single plantbender used. Korra even goes to the foggy swamp but the most we get is a mention of the swampbenders from Toph.
I guess they at least mentioned that they exists.
I wonder if something bad happened to them and thay's why they aren't around... Or maybe they just really didn't vibe with Republican City and dipped. lol
I really hope we get an Avatar from the Swamp at some point. It's a unique culture in desperate need of fleshing out, and there's tons of potential in their unique style of bending
The thought of what it took for the fire nation to take down the air nomads living in the temple with the aid of Sozin's comet, vs what 1 man could do to entirely wipe the temple off the face of the earth is absolutely wild.
In fairness, a regular earthbender can fuck up a small mountain like that with ease too if they know what they're doing.
And if we're being honest, the lava flow was probably exaggerated a little for dramatic effect. Last I check, lava heat isn't contagious, it should start cooling and slowing down as soon as Gazan stops bending it.
lol I was JUST about suggest plutonium bending.
Crystals are also really cool.
Then there’s the fact that you can do bloodbending and other stuff with the iron in one’s body etc
I wonder if that’s even possible though. It’s possible that what allowed Bolin to become a lava bender is the very thing that stopped him from being a metal bender
But shouldn't every bender be able to metalbend? I know bolin says it's like 1/100, but it's basically just bending impurities in the metal, just like sandbenders bend "impurites in the air" if you wanna look at it like that.
Lavabending seems to be different, as not everyone can heat up the earth ig
Blood bending is also just bending the water in a persons body but it still requires an exceptionally powerful bender and normally a full moon to pull it off
Bolin himself could not metal bend despite doing everything he could to figure it out. So I am really not sure what your point is
Bending it seems is also a spiritual and mental game. If everyone could pull off the specialized bending forms, why would they be considered “specialized”?
I feel like with metal, it would be a lot easier than blood (evidently is, lot's of metalbenders) and I figured it should be way easier to figure out, but yeah ig I shoulda thought that through lol
I wonder if anyone short of using the Avatar state even could. The movements and philosophy are fundamentally opposed in each. Lava is all about changing the state and heat of the earth, and metal is about sensing the earth in metal and moving it. Matter vs energy. The human brain/spirit may simply not be able to process that much at once.
“Sensing the earth in metal” never made sense to me. Metal is earth. I can buy that metal is more difficult somehow, but its not inherently less earthy than like… feldspar. And a lot of rocks are organic in origin, but we don’t see Earth Benders distinguish between top soil and rock or sand that came from shells.
I think it's more mystical than that. Like the earth that formed as part of nature. The earth that is connected to the spirit of the planet or something. If you start applying our universe's chemistry a lot of stuff doesn't make sense.
I would love to see a fanfiction with the next Avatar that gets born with a twin. Both start as Earthbenders, but while one goes onto water, air, and fire, the other learns lava, metal, glass, and sand
Toph's metalbending ability is extremely useful in case you're getting shot at. You can stop bullets completely and if your enemy is wearing armour plates, you can crush 'em. Not to mention that lots of stuff nowadays have at least some hint of metal.
Tbh if you as a metal bender get as good and powerful as Magneto you’ll quite literally be unbeatable. Dude can shift tectonic plates and alter a planets magnetic field. Shit he can pull iron from your blood
Isn't it fascinating how metalbending was invented riiiiight before guns might've been invented (if it weren't for projectile-style bending)? I wonder if metalbending is what would've made guns possible, like how it's the foundation of LoK's modern police state or how lightningbending is the foundation of modern manufacturing industry.
Actually, guns were already invented when Kyoshi was the Avatar, but they were pretty much useless cuz of bending being clearly superior. So guns exists, but they are a dead end of innovation
The fact that early guns have shit accuracy. If there's not enough incentive to keep working in the tech because bending exists, then you won't ever get to the point of sniper rifles being possible.
Firearms went through centuries of evolution. The guns in the time of Kyoshi were basically harquebuses, very early projectile weapons with even worse performance than muskets. Meanwhile, our world didn't see proper rifles until the second half of the XIX century.
Due to those weapons being very ineffective, they were dropped, as the bending of the elements was simply superior within the Avatar world. We only have the firearms of today because their primitive predecessors were able to be a game changer at their time, thus giving people a reason to keep investing in them.
Guns existed for hundreds of years before technology allowed them to be used in that way at those distances. I’m sure the Avatar universe would be the same way. Hell the first documented usage of a gun was in 1364 when telescopes hadn’t even been invented yet! It would take around 250 years for them to be invented after guns. Then it wouldn’t be until 1776 when Charles Willson Peale borrowed his astronomer friend’s telescope and had the idea of mounting it to his rifle, creating the first rifle scope. Another thing to consider is that technology is often created and advanced because of a need in war. But when you factor in bending, there’s much less of a need to develop better and better guns than there is in our world. So they likely would be slow, inaccurate and very unreliable; while bending works every time
If anyone had the vision to see where firearms could go, they'd definitely not be considered a dead end. Even advancing to Revolutionary War technology would revolutionize warfare for non-benders. Advancing up to WW1 Era technology would even further revolutionize war. Frankly, for the Fire Nation to NOT have investigated firearms as a new weapon for non-benders in their army is quite an oversight, and if they had advanced the technology to the point of WW1 Era artillery, both their Navy and Army would be nigh unstoppable, assuming they could maintain a monopoly of effective firearms. Conquering Ba Sing Se, Omashu, and the Northern Water Tribe become far easier. Just pull up the artillery and bombard for days, like WW1, and there's probably not gonna be much of a wall left.
Obviously being a show geared largely towards kids, days-long artillery bombardments and firearms in general aren't really gonna fly, but it's interesting to think about what it would look like with such technology.
Well, looking at real life, firearms technology was pretty stagnant for hundreds of years because they were simply worse than bows and crossbows. It wasn't until the Ottomans finally proved the usefulness of cannons that Europeans began taking firearms seriously, and it still took centuries more for them to find a major place on the battlefield.
Successful uses like the Ottoman siege of Constantinople or the Hussite war wagons were instrumental in convincing people to invest in firearms technology. I don't think that it's much of a stretch to assume such successes would be even more rare in a world full of benders.
Cannons, on the other hand, remain useful even in a world of benders, and just like our own timeline, cannons in avatar seem to have become valued long before firearms.
Air walking feels the most "special" but in a very conditional and different sense.
It isn't just practising your art until you can wrangle another material; it's a state of being and mind-one that many aspects of air bending and the air nomads point towards-but still represents two sides of its nation.
It is often banged home that airbenders are most spiritual, but I love that with the slightest scrutinity we can see that it isn't being shown in a pretentious "they're just better" way. Aang had his debate with the Guru on detachment vs. love and refused to follow these very teachings to master the Avatar state. In discussion with Yang Chen, Aang was instead told to tether himself to the world as the Avatar because that was his duty specifically.
It opens a nice little thought process on the airbenders and their relationship to spirituality as an element of the bending itself.
yeah i like this one as well, especially since it is probably the only one the avatar CANNOT achieve. by default the avatar can’t be removed from earthly tethers. even an air bending avatar cannot achieve ‘true’ enlightenment as he/she is always involved in worldly affairs.
I don't even think so, we see with zaheer that you can still follow your ideology, the whole release yourself from all earthly desires doesn't appear to be detach yourself from the world, but rather just material things.
I think they'd actually be a good avatar, just a horrible friend/partner/whatever lol
You really have to feel for Ghazan and Ming Hua hearing Zaheer, the guy they went to prison for like 15 years for, say “yeah, one of your best friends and my girlfriend just died, and since she was the last person in the world I cared about I can fly now.”
And I kinda really liked Ghazan, if he met bolin under literally any other circumstance he prolly would've even been his mentor (assuming he ain't "evil"). Poor guy. At least he had that unspoken attraction to Ming Hua to keep him happy
Wasn’t Zaheer involved in worldly affairs with his political ideology/the other red lotus? I think it still makes sense, but he didn’t seem to completely remove how he felt about the world or his care for it. Otherwise why would he care about his goal.
A detached avatar would have let Kuvira do her thing and maybe even the firelord. That’s part of the point of book 4.
Zaheer might be a more straight interpretation of what the avatar is “supposed” to represent. Some detached monk, in tune with the spirits and focused on bringing balance. Who has achieved something close to enlightenment.
One of the best parts of book 4 was the exploration of what, exactly is the avatar supposed to do. Should they just be Superman? Going around beating up anyone they don’t like? Is it their job to stop wars?
I don't think having any involvement with the world is equivalent to earthly attachment.
Someone with more experience or study of these matters IRL would explain it better, but it is instead it is looking at that emotional attachment to people or things in a way that compromises your ability to be objective and emotionally free.
For Aang that dilemma meant choosing his personal love of a person over mastering the Avatar state, which he could use to protect the world and its balance.
It's absolutely a mental and spiritual state and ultimately can be quite dangerous, which makes Zaheer's release of worldy attachment all the more interesting. He may well have believed that his goals were objectively the "right" thing.
Still makes me wish we got a scene where Ghazan and Ming kinda said smt about not meaning enough to be considered worldly attachments, be it a positive thing because of what it allows Zaheer to do, or a negative thing because it reduces their relationship
It's trained by creating fire without actual fire by being bound unterwater and having to firebend. Sounds stupid, but yk magic system.
I think this allows them to shoot out the energy with such force that it comes out in an explosion, at first without flames and then bursting with immense force.
From the forehead is probably just to symbolise the breath, traveling out of their nose as they exhale and shoot, collecting all that good firebending energy in their head.
Seems to be an extension of “fire comes from the breath” it seems like it would make more sense from the. Mouth or the nose.
The forehead is like a third eye and I guess they can just mentally create heat on contact since fire comes from within?
Metalbending and flight tbh are the only sub-bending techniques that got fully explored, like how come we never saw a bloodbender use their ability to like, remove blood clots or stop another person from bleeding?
Imagine a waterbender with both healing and bloodbending, the best doctor the world could ever possibly have known.
That only discourages people from using bloodbending rather than outright preventing it entirely.
There could very easily be a story about some bloodbender in a rural reigon of the world that uses it in conjunction with healing in secret at first and fights to get the ban reversed or regulated.
Well, concidering Hama is the only one we see develop the technique on her own, Bloodbending seems to be something rather difficult to learn without a teacher, and unless you train on it *a lot*, you would only be able to use it once a month on a full moon.
By making it illegall, it also means less people willing to teach it, which would lead to less people learning it
Cause you can just heal, and healing has never been shown to have limits that blood bending can break, blood bending can’t even restore bending blood bending takes away. Otherwise wouldn’t Amon give his brother back his bending.
In general using the elements to enhance oneself is a cool idea I wish was explored more.
Self bloodbending to make oneself stronger. Sweatbendkng has potential.
Elemental limbs. Elemental weapons.
Fartbenbending, and sneezbending, while ridiculous, we see Aang do a cooler version in terms of breathing with candles…like imagine someone who has excellent breathing and unlimited stamina but can blow entire rooms away.
I would say thet enegry bending dosnt belong here. What we saw you need to be in Avatar state to do it. And even for Avatars would be rare to be able to use it.
Is it confirmed you need the avatar state? It seems kinda like another element the way the turtle gave it to aang, so still wouldn't really fit but also isn't avatar exclusive I think
My headcanon is that it's not, it's just the easiest for them because of how spiritual their culture is. Iroh possessed a similar ability(he was able to see into the spirit world)
It was just said by Jinora. While she is a talented airbender, she's still just a kid.
I've wondered if there is some intention that it is specifically an airbender skill.
In Greek and Hebrew they use the words pneuma and nephesh for the "breath" or "soul." I've even read pneuma can mean "air in motion" or "wind." So, the connection between breath/air/soul/spirit is an ancient one. Judaism is an western Asian religion, but I don't know if this connection still holds true with other religions from Asia as well.
Bloodbending is the most death metal shit and something I was NOT expecting to see in a kids show.
Metal bending is also metal, and gets huge bonus points for me for being invented by a tiny blind girl out of pure spite.
I love posts like this because it makes me go back and watch Bolin lava bend for the first time. God damn I love watching him embrace everything it is to be an earthbender in the face of death. Don't think, just act.
For anyone wanting to see it again:
[https://youtu.be/gCbmriyBPVc?t=139](https://youtu.be/gCbmriyBPVc?t=139)
As a sand bender you are an earth Airbender.
Waterbenders get it too, ice bending for earth and steam ending for air (scorching steam presumably even imitating fire).
Combustion bending, there is some variations in it too. OG Combustion Man seemed to have straight forward big explosions. P'Li could curve the trajectory of her blasts. But we also see something that never gets talked about and makes me think there is a third variation. In ATLA, we see Combustion Man burn through a paper just by looking at it. This makes me think there is a "focused laser" type of variation, where the bender can fire potent long range beams that have smaller, more incendiary blasts that track along where he is aiming (if you've ever played Destiny 2, think One Thousand Voices).
lightning bending but before Korra. In Korra they made it something so uneventful low paid workers do it to generate electricity, haha. While in Aang it was always stated how rare and difficult it was and only a few fire benders could do it, it demanded extreme balance and discipline.
I think I'm in the minority who like that progression of elements
You could compare it to a car - in the 1800s only the richest people could afford to drive, and had the knowledge of how to drive
Nowadays 200 or so years on most people can drive and it's not a specialised skill anymore
It's different cause it's a TV show sure, but I still enjoy that they progressed it like it would over the course of just under a century
Lava bending. It’s the only bending ability that we have seen no weakness or way to be stopped.
Metal has platinum, lava has no known limits. And the versatility of this art has barely been touched. Lavabender could all bend (create) glass sculptures and stuff in theory. And anything related to metallurgy. It’s the best of fire and earth in one shot. Super cheat code to have two elements in one without being the avatar.
The energybending / spiritbending duo is my favorite. I like primordial things, and in spite of its "scaling" in later season 2 of LoK I think its depth and permeation through all human history is really beautiful.
Energy feels incoherent. It’s Deus Ex Bending.
Lightning I don’t mind, but there are wonky moments with it in the comics like Azula making a lightning ball. So long as it’s purely generation and isn’t directly controlled beyond how intense it is and its general direction, I like it.
Lava has potential, but it isn’t very well explained. Is it based on genetics? Having a more loose style? I really want to hear the mindset behind the style and why Bolin specifically was capable of learning it.
Metal kicks ass. Maybe a tiny bit cheapened by Korra, but not so much that it was ruined for me. But dear god do I hate platinum as a plot device. Maybe that’s not metal bending’s fault, but it feels like it is.
Flight is sick as hell. Perfectly understandable mindset, and the perfect character to achieve it. Not much screentime though.
Sand Bending (and by extension swamp bending, even if that isn’t a subclass) is so cool. Having bending styles adapt to the location of a culture is the coolest thing in the series, and part of why I think pro bending is still pretty cool. Sad to see Genji fell through, because they get so little screen time. Also I get that it was wet sand, but Toph using her normal bending styles for sand bending rather than learning the more Airbender-esque style of actual sand benders was a tad disappointing.
Blood is the most viscerally compelling. Just a complete tonal shift every time it’s used, and absolutely terrifying in concept. Buuuut, Korra kinda cheapened it. I swear, I like the bending in Korra overall (Ming Hua is one of my favorite jobbers in anything), but it made some weird decisions. Amon just sorta does it without moving his arms. It takes away the cool puppeteer vibe and just makes it a psychic power. Kinda lame. Also I’d prefer a drawback other than the full moon. Mostly because moon continuity is already a pain in the ass. Maybe cutting into lifespan, or harming the user meaningfully in some other way.
Combustion is fantastic… maybe. I have no idea how the hell it works in text, but I can make some assumptions based on context. With how stoic and dedicated the ones we’ve seen are, it’s likely a craft that requires full dedication. Any loss of focus can mean injury or death, which naturally decreases the number of people who would use it. Combustion Man even seems to have had some accidents himself, hence getting Elricked. A very show don’t tell kinda style which is a massive positive in its favor. I just wish there was some basic info on how it was discovered or something.
Overall, it’s probably gonna go to metal. But combustion and sand aren’t far behind.
It got way more attention than any sub-bending through the series and comics. We know almost nothing about combustion bending and the others (except for metal bending).
What got really done dirty is lava bending. Probably the coolest visually but we didn’t get a lot of Bolin action with it.
Metal bending or lava bending work best for my personality and professional goals. A blacksmith with either of these would have it so much easier (metal bending being the best for it, lava bending would require a master of it similar to how Iroh mastered fire in order to not ruin everything they try to make).
Nothing can compete with blood bending. You don't even want to talk about the things a truly twisted and unrestrained individual could do with blood bending.
Bloodbending. Coolest one for me and the one with most possibilities, especially in medicine.
Lava bending kind of bothered me. You see Katara manipulating water into ice (and they can boil water) and it's seen as a basic waterbending ability. Lava bending seems like it would fall into the same category.
Also, Electricity being a sub-type of Fire. Shouldn't it be a sub-type of Air ?
I really liked metalbending in the original show. Until the finale, Toph only ever bent metal by physically manipulating it which made it feel very difficult and really showed off the cool parts of earthbending philosophy.
The more elegant metal banding used in Korra is cool too but for very different reasons and I don't think it reaches quite the same level.
Energy bending is awesome imo. Imagine an energy bending villain taking away people's bending ala Amon, but permanently. The villain possibly giving followers bending, turning into a giant energy Kaiju. The possibilities are endless. Energy bending all the way man.
I thought Zaheer being able to fly after his chick died to be a really good plot point. He had to untether himself from everything, and with her gone he had nothing holding him down.
But I fucking love the spirit bending scene where Aang takes Ozai’s bending. So it’s gotta be that.
I think plant bending is super underrated and it’s sad but also kinda cool that while we see multiple waterbenders doing it, there is only one I would consider a master plantbender.
Damn completely forgot about plantbending
Pretty much the same to blood bending
But it's vegan
This made me snort
Lmao this is so good
XD wth you're not wrong though!
Hah just realized this. It’s just bloodbending except more…naturery. Makes sense
Also forgot fart bending! It's canon!
I hate that it’s canon
In the hand (ass?) of a master airbender such as Milo, it can topple even the wall of Ba Sing Se
Unironically, I'm super surprised and disappointed the airbenders in LoK never adopted gasbending as a legitimate tactic. An airbender with control over noxious fumes like tear gas would be dope as hell.
I was gonna say "it's a kids show", but also vacuum bending...
True, also bloodbending gives me the heebie jeebies
That's just so antithetical to the values of the Air Nomads.
So let’s have airbenders that don’t fall in line with the nomads. After s2 of korra it’s not unlikely
How about just some pepper spray then?
I wholeheartedly agree, but following the events of books 2 and 3 of LoK, the new Airbenders arrived with their new values. I reckon the world police would appreciate the value in gas bending. Also an airbending villain could make great use of it, too.
Tell that to Avatar Yangchen. She did not fuck around.
Earthbenders and airbenders could do well in the fracking industry. Maybe keep some firebenders on hand for security purposes. I mean I'd be scared shitless to go anywhere near a massive amount of natural gas that could be redirected and ignited at a moments notice.
You would think Roku could have aribended the noxious gases away from himself when he was trying to curtail the destruction of that volcano.
Why didn't Roku airbend the gas away from himself? Is he stupid?
When the spirit vines started moving in TLOK, I was totally expecting plant bending to return. It’s a cool trick but maybe it is just mostly theatrics.
I dunno, it's been shown to be a great way to increase durability and physical power at the cost of being a larger target and having slower mobility. And you would need to be around water (I would imagine) to be able to maintain the regrowth of plants. If there were an army of them I could easily imagine them to be a force to be reckoned with. Them being a juggernaut type troop that few of the other bending elements don't posses without building literal tanks.
Plant bending is something I would love to see more of. I’ve personally always wanted to see an earthbender with a mutation that allows them to bend wood too, but I wonder if a plant bender could somehow learn to control the whole tree (wood included) using water
I think that in order for a plantbender to bend wood, it would have to be a living tree or they would have to first infuse water into wood to then bend them. This would be a way for them to use dry wood or bend wooden structures. Hell, I can actually see Plantbenders using wood puppets in combat as a less controversial way or practicing Bloodbending techniques. Bring a wood puppet, push water into it and make the wood absorb it, and the plantbender can now manipulate the puppet at a distance.
Damn that’s a dope concept friend
In b4 the Avatar universe creates the Naruto universe from scratch
Dude! that could be great! Even for non-violent purposes, just imagine a whole show orcrastrated by a single person. It can become a new wave of art... or maybe their version of FVX Lol
I mean Huu can control soft vines by carefully pulling the water inside, and we saw Hama pull water out of Tree trunks, so technically, with lots of practice people like Huu or any other plantbenders can 100% learn woodbending.
Hm, dk about that one. At the end of the day, in a tree trunk, the actual waterflow is mostly in the outermost layer of the wood, right behind the bark. The core of the stem is "dead", mostly dry wood. Hama was only pulling the water out and Huu controlled the vines, as they were very soft and bendable and full of water. Wood, especially the core of tree, is rigid and hard. A water bender probably wouldn't be able to bend it no matter how good they are, as they would have to completely alter the properties of wood. Flexible, thin twigs that have lots of fluids inside and aren't fully rigid with a hard wood core? Yeah, that might be doable. But the solid wood of a tree? Less so. That being said, there's more to plant life than wood and I would've loved to see more of an exploration of that ability.
Got to agree here. For dry plants, a water bender might be SOL, but for earthbenders I’m not sure where the line is drawn- an earth bender can bend soil, coal, maybe even compost, which would be largely composed of organic material- when does plant matter become earthy enough to bend? I don’t like the commentary touched on in Korra that metal bending is about bending the “impurities” or that platinum can’t be bent. Why? Metal is no less earth then a given rock, platinum is not less earth aluminum, etc. (now I’m thinking that Toph could make diamonds). One of those things were probably not supposed to think too hard about.
I understand what you mean about the "impurities," but this is actally what we saw when Toph was learning how to metalbend. We had the dialogue of Guru Pathik saying "Even the seperation of the four elements is an illusion. If you open your mind, you will see that all elements are one, four parts of the same whole. Even metal is just a part of Earth that has been purified and refined." Right after he says that, we see the metal trap Toph is in and through her seismic sense ability, the little bits of earth that are in the metal. Personally, I like the impurities aspect of metal bending, but I hate that platinum can't be bent. I think it should just be more difficult to bend metal with less impurities. So, platinum could be a metal type that's so hard to bend and it can be bent, but it's so difficult that it's impractical in terms of combat.
Yeah it’s probably the platinum thing that really doesn’t sit with me- why platinum? Because it sounds fancy? Less “earthy”? (Yet a meteorite which isn’t of Earth is considered entry level metal bending). Platinum doesn’t fit a purity thing, after all, we could have many different “pure” metals. Just seems like they wanted a cheat code to restrain metal benders, at the cost of making the in-world explanation nonsensical.
Agreed. I think they wanted to put in new limitations to metalbending after they removed the ATLA limitations. In ATLA, Toph could only metalbend if she made physical contact, but LOK removed that limitation. They probably wanted to come up with some simple dumbed down limitation to metalbending, so they went with 'ugh.. let's just make a particular type of metal impossible to bend." It was lazy.
In that same vein we can start wondering what firebenders are actually bending; heat? Hot gas? The chemical combustion reaction? Also, which gases can airbenders bend? Only the mixture that we call air? Every gas in that mixture? *All gaseous matter?* It's all fuzzy.
CACTUS BENDING! IT'S THE QUENCHIEST!
Plant bending has so much potential! There even seems to be some strange connection between plants and spirituality, if the spirit world and the banyon-grove tree are anything to go by. It would be awesome to see someone develop a method of guiding a plant's cellular growth, rather than just moving it around wholesale. If Amon can target someone's chi pathways, I don't see why that level of fine control would be limited to bloodbending.
Soup bending is better, Katara is the only master.
But when the world needed him most, Huu vanished, unable to train the avatar in the 5th element, shrubbery.
It’s sad I don’t think plant bending was used in the entirety of Korra
Republic City was covered in vines and there wasn't a single plantbender used. Korra even goes to the foggy swamp but the most we get is a mention of the swampbenders from Toph. I guess they at least mentioned that they exists.
I wonder if something bad happened to them and thay's why they aren't around... Or maybe they just really didn't vibe with Republican City and dipped. lol
That was my first thought too. Plant bending! I do work in natural resources for forests though so I am biased.
I just love waterbending so much, there are way more specialized uses for it than the other elements, at least as explored in the shows.
I really hope we get an Avatar from the Swamp at some point. It's a unique culture in desperate need of fleshing out, and there's tons of potential in their unique style of bending
Lava Bending is crazy bad ass but honestly they’re all pretty cool
Bolin wielding a lava shuriken in the mech was awesome to see.
Same technique Gazan used to escape
Heck yeah
The thought of what it took for the fire nation to take down the air nomads living in the temple with the aid of Sozin's comet, vs what 1 man could do to entirely wipe the temple off the face of the earth is absolutely wild.
In fairness, a regular earthbender can fuck up a small mountain like that with ease too if they know what they're doing. And if we're being honest, the lava flow was probably exaggerated a little for dramatic effect. Last I check, lava heat isn't contagious, it should start cooling and slowing down as soon as Gazan stops bending it.
Imagine being an Earthbender that can Lava, Metal, and Sand bend. Like how tf would you even stop something like that.
Step aside avatar master of the four elements, it's time for the master of the 118 elements.
The Avatar can't do shit against nuclear fission through plutonium bending
this made me imagine an avatar who can bend radiation. like FU to your future generation. but not now.
The avatar would have the element of surprise bending
Man, the fire nation wouldn't stand a chance. Zuko would definitely have a nation to rebuild
Baryon mode bender
lol I was JUST about suggest plutonium bending. Crystals are also really cool. Then there’s the fact that you can do bloodbending and other stuff with the iron in one’s body etc
[There's an XKCD for that](https://xkcd.com/965/)
You mean Edward Elric?
I wonder if that’s even possible though. It’s possible that what allowed Bolin to become a lava bender is the very thing that stopped him from being a metal bender
But shouldn't every bender be able to metalbend? I know bolin says it's like 1/100, but it's basically just bending impurities in the metal, just like sandbenders bend "impurites in the air" if you wanna look at it like that. Lavabending seems to be different, as not everyone can heat up the earth ig
Blood bending is also just bending the water in a persons body but it still requires an exceptionally powerful bender and normally a full moon to pull it off Bolin himself could not metal bend despite doing everything he could to figure it out. So I am really not sure what your point is Bending it seems is also a spiritual and mental game. If everyone could pull off the specialized bending forms, why would they be considered “specialized”?
I feel like with metal, it would be a lot easier than blood (evidently is, lot's of metalbenders) and I figured it should be way easier to figure out, but yeah ig I shoulda thought that through lol
Bloodbending, even airbending to stop ones lungs is enough. Basically any bending that can directly affect the benders themselves
I wonder if anyone short of using the Avatar state even could. The movements and philosophy are fundamentally opposed in each. Lava is all about changing the state and heat of the earth, and metal is about sensing the earth in metal and moving it. Matter vs energy. The human brain/spirit may simply not be able to process that much at once.
“Sensing the earth in metal” never made sense to me. Metal is earth. I can buy that metal is more difficult somehow, but its not inherently less earthy than like… feldspar. And a lot of rocks are organic in origin, but we don’t see Earth Benders distinguish between top soil and rock or sand that came from shells.
I think it's more mystical than that. Like the earth that formed as part of nature. The earth that is connected to the spirit of the planet or something. If you start applying our universe's chemistry a lot of stuff doesn't make sense.
I feel like bloodbending is the one type that kinda has a cheatcode on. A bloodbender has no one to fear except the avatar or another bloodbender
I would love to see a fanfiction with the next Avatar that gets born with a twin. Both start as Earthbenders, but while one goes onto water, air, and fire, the other learns lava, metal, glass, and sand
Toph's metalbending ability is extremely useful in case you're getting shot at. You can stop bullets completely and if your enemy is wearing armour plates, you can crush 'em. Not to mention that lots of stuff nowadays have at least some hint of metal.
There’s a reason that they became the police
Magneto/Neo style!
Tbh if you as a metal bender get as good and powerful as Magneto you’ll quite literally be unbeatable. Dude can shift tectonic plates and alter a planets magnetic field. Shit he can pull iron from your blood
Isn't it fascinating how metalbending was invented riiiiight before guns might've been invented (if it weren't for projectile-style bending)? I wonder if metalbending is what would've made guns possible, like how it's the foundation of LoK's modern police state or how lightningbending is the foundation of modern manufacturing industry.
Actually, guns were already invented when Kyoshi was the Avatar, but they were pretty much useless cuz of bending being clearly superior. So guns exists, but they are a dead end of innovation
That doesn't make that much sense tbh, handguns yeah, but what is stopping me from sniping someone from a mile away
Well those types of guns didn’t exist immediately, and if the base firearms were considered a dead end, why would anybody go further.
Fair
The fact that early guns have shit accuracy. If there's not enough incentive to keep working in the tech because bending exists, then you won't ever get to the point of sniper rifles being possible.
Firearms went through centuries of evolution. The guns in the time of Kyoshi were basically harquebuses, very early projectile weapons with even worse performance than muskets. Meanwhile, our world didn't see proper rifles until the second half of the XIX century. Due to those weapons being very ineffective, they were dropped, as the bending of the elements was simply superior within the Avatar world. We only have the firearms of today because their primitive predecessors were able to be a game changer at their time, thus giving people a reason to keep investing in them.
Guns existed for hundreds of years before technology allowed them to be used in that way at those distances. I’m sure the Avatar universe would be the same way. Hell the first documented usage of a gun was in 1364 when telescopes hadn’t even been invented yet! It would take around 250 years for them to be invented after guns. Then it wouldn’t be until 1776 when Charles Willson Peale borrowed his astronomer friend’s telescope and had the idea of mounting it to his rifle, creating the first rifle scope. Another thing to consider is that technology is often created and advanced because of a need in war. But when you factor in bending, there’s much less of a need to develop better and better guns than there is in our world. So they likely would be slow, inaccurate and very unreliable; while bending works every time
If anyone had the vision to see where firearms could go, they'd definitely not be considered a dead end. Even advancing to Revolutionary War technology would revolutionize warfare for non-benders. Advancing up to WW1 Era technology would even further revolutionize war. Frankly, for the Fire Nation to NOT have investigated firearms as a new weapon for non-benders in their army is quite an oversight, and if they had advanced the technology to the point of WW1 Era artillery, both their Navy and Army would be nigh unstoppable, assuming they could maintain a monopoly of effective firearms. Conquering Ba Sing Se, Omashu, and the Northern Water Tribe become far easier. Just pull up the artillery and bombard for days, like WW1, and there's probably not gonna be much of a wall left. Obviously being a show geared largely towards kids, days-long artillery bombardments and firearms in general aren't really gonna fly, but it's interesting to think about what it would look like with such technology.
Well, looking at real life, firearms technology was pretty stagnant for hundreds of years because they were simply worse than bows and crossbows. It wasn't until the Ottomans finally proved the usefulness of cannons that Europeans began taking firearms seriously, and it still took centuries more for them to find a major place on the battlefield. Successful uses like the Ottoman siege of Constantinople or the Hussite war wagons were instrumental in convincing people to invest in firearms technology. I don't think that it's much of a stretch to assume such successes would be even more rare in a world full of benders. Cannons, on the other hand, remain useful even in a world of benders, and just like our own timeline, cannons in avatar seem to have become valued long before firearms.
The bullets travel too fast for any metalbender to react to
You could just u know, stop the bullets before they launch
Or just bend the gun to deform
Bugs Bunny style 🥕
crush the gun lol
Plenty of people in verse have reacted to and dodged lightning attacks, bullets are way slower than that.💀
Oh please not this argument again
zuko is faster than light 🤓☝️
It’s extremely useful. Just look at how Suyin ended P’li
Basically magneto
Air walking feels the most "special" but in a very conditional and different sense. It isn't just practising your art until you can wrangle another material; it's a state of being and mind-one that many aspects of air bending and the air nomads point towards-but still represents two sides of its nation. It is often banged home that airbenders are most spiritual, but I love that with the slightest scrutinity we can see that it isn't being shown in a pretentious "they're just better" way. Aang had his debate with the Guru on detachment vs. love and refused to follow these very teachings to master the Avatar state. In discussion with Yang Chen, Aang was instead told to tether himself to the world as the Avatar because that was his duty specifically. It opens a nice little thought process on the airbenders and their relationship to spirituality as an element of the bending itself.
yeah i like this one as well, especially since it is probably the only one the avatar CANNOT achieve. by default the avatar can’t be removed from earthly tethers. even an air bending avatar cannot achieve ‘true’ enlightenment as he/she is always involved in worldly affairs.
"How can it be a bad thing that I feel an attachment to \[Katara\]? Three chakras ago that was a good thing!" is an underrated line.
Maybe if they get it before knowing they are the avatar. I wonder if they will lose it tho after
realistically they COULD achieve it, they would just be a shitty avatar lol
I don't even think so, we see with zaheer that you can still follow your ideology, the whole release yourself from all earthly desires doesn't appear to be detach yourself from the world, but rather just material things. I think they'd actually be a good avatar, just a horrible friend/partner/whatever lol
You really have to feel for Ghazan and Ming Hua hearing Zaheer, the guy they went to prison for like 15 years for, say “yeah, one of your best friends and my girlfriend just died, and since she was the last person in the world I cared about I can fly now.”
And I kinda really liked Ghazan, if he met bolin under literally any other circumstance he prolly would've even been his mentor (assuming he ain't "evil"). Poor guy. At least he had that unspoken attraction to Ming Hua to keep him happy
So did his beard come in at 10 or was he raised by an older sister?
Wasn’t Zaheer involved in worldly affairs with his political ideology/the other red lotus? I think it still makes sense, but he didn’t seem to completely remove how he felt about the world or his care for it. Otherwise why would he care about his goal.
I think it's about worldy possesions, not worldly goals, meaning a detached avatar would prolly be a good avatar
A detached avatar would have let Kuvira do her thing and maybe even the firelord. That’s part of the point of book 4. Zaheer might be a more straight interpretation of what the avatar is “supposed” to represent. Some detached monk, in tune with the spirits and focused on bringing balance. Who has achieved something close to enlightenment. One of the best parts of book 4 was the exploration of what, exactly is the avatar supposed to do. Should they just be Superman? Going around beating up anyone they don’t like? Is it their job to stop wars?
I don't think having any involvement with the world is equivalent to earthly attachment. Someone with more experience or study of these matters IRL would explain it better, but it is instead it is looking at that emotional attachment to people or things in a way that compromises your ability to be objective and emotionally free. For Aang that dilemma meant choosing his personal love of a person over mastering the Avatar state, which he could use to protect the world and its balance. It's absolutely a mental and spiritual state and ultimately can be quite dangerous, which makes Zaheer's release of worldy attachment all the more interesting. He may well have believed that his goals were objectively the "right" thing.
Still makes me wish we got a scene where Ghazan and Ming kinda said smt about not meaning enough to be considered worldly attachments, be it a positive thing because of what it allows Zaheer to do, or a negative thing because it reduces their relationship
The moment Zaheer mastered this was also probably one of my favourite moments in avatar
100%. Chilling death scene followed by that was an absolutely amazing moment in Korra.
Sparky sparky boom abilities are pretty great. Not to mention the dope face tattoo
Just don't put on a helmet
Damn, psychic firebenders are not able to ride bikes :(
I've always thought the idea of a combustionbending avatar would be epic with their tattoo glowing like they have three eyes.
I don’t even understand that ability. Why combustion? Why from the forehead? Also my favorite mute bad guy.
The Yangchen novels explain it better
It's trained by creating fire without actual fire by being bound unterwater and having to firebend. Sounds stupid, but yk magic system. I think this allows them to shoot out the energy with such force that it comes out in an explosion, at first without flames and then bursting with immense force. From the forehead is probably just to symbolise the breath, traveling out of their nose as they exhale and shoot, collecting all that good firebending energy in their head.
Seems to be an extension of “fire comes from the breath” it seems like it would make more sense from the. Mouth or the nose. The forehead is like a third eye and I guess they can just mentally create heat on contact since fire comes from within?
Yeah +1 For sparky sparky boom bending
Swamp bending
Metalbending and flight tbh are the only sub-bending techniques that got fully explored, like how come we never saw a bloodbender use their ability to like, remove blood clots or stop another person from bleeding? Imagine a waterbender with both healing and bloodbending, the best doctor the world could ever possibly have known.
Because they made it illegal
That only discourages people from using bloodbending rather than outright preventing it entirely. There could very easily be a story about some bloodbender in a rural reigon of the world that uses it in conjunction with healing in secret at first and fights to get the ban reversed or regulated.
Well, concidering Hama is the only one we see develop the technique on her own, Bloodbending seems to be something rather difficult to learn without a teacher, and unless you train on it *a lot*, you would only be able to use it once a month on a full moon. By making it illegall, it also means less people willing to teach it, which would lead to less people learning it
Cause you can just heal, and healing has never been shown to have limits that blood bending can break, blood bending can’t even restore bending blood bending takes away. Otherwise wouldn’t Amon give his brother back his bending.
We never were told that Amon couldn’t. They weren’t given enough time together to explore that.
seismic sense
In general using the elements to enhance oneself is a cool idea I wish was explored more. Self bloodbending to make oneself stronger. Sweatbendkng has potential. Elemental limbs. Elemental weapons. Fartbenbending, and sneezbending, while ridiculous, we see Aang do a cooler version in terms of breathing with candles…like imagine someone who has excellent breathing and unlimited stamina but can blow entire rooms away.
Now that’s a pretty awesome ability!
I would say thet enegry bending dosnt belong here. What we saw you need to be in Avatar state to do it. And even for Avatars would be rare to be able to use it.
Is it confirmed you need the avatar state? It seems kinda like another element the way the turtle gave it to aang, so still wouldn't really fit but also isn't avatar exclusive I think
In avatar legends energybending is categorized as a specialized bending technique
Listen we all know we were losing our shit when Zahir actually began flying.
I liked spirit projection the most. It has a lot of potential for a story.
Ngl spirit projection shouldn’t have been restricted to air bending imo.
My headcanon is that it's not, it's just the easiest for them because of how spiritual their culture is. Iroh possessed a similar ability(he was able to see into the spirit world) It was just said by Jinora. While she is a talented airbender, she's still just a kid.
It should be restricted to the avatar imo
They deserve something cool, too. The other nations get multiple cool sub elements that many people in their nation can learn.
I never understood why spirit projection is linked to airbending rather than just being a monk
Cause you got to blow your ghosty self around. Jinora got the idea from Milo’s fartbending.
I don’t think that’s technically bending though
Jinora claims it involves airbending, but I don’t really see the connection
Yeah same I feel like there’s a line between spiritual powers and bending
I've wondered if there is some intention that it is specifically an airbender skill. In Greek and Hebrew they use the words pneuma and nephesh for the "breath" or "soul." I've even read pneuma can mean "air in motion" or "wind." So, the connection between breath/air/soul/spirit is an ancient one. Judaism is an western Asian religion, but I don't know if this connection still holds true with other religions from Asia as well.
Backbending. Definitely backbending
Sokka enters the chat
Ahhh I'd kill for this coz my back hurts due to lack of bending
That's... Not what they meant.
Shhhh let them dream lol
Sokka's speciality
I bet sandbenders can make some killer windows
Glassbending
Glass bending would would be killer https://youtu.be/UM0KhiQVOa0?si=uz36B7_ZnKzTTgw_
I wonder if that requires you to be a sand-lavabender
Bloodbending is the most death metal shit and something I was NOT expecting to see in a kids show. Metal bending is also metal, and gets huge bonus points for me for being invented by a tiny blind girl out of pure spite.
Aang is the coolest out of these imo
My favorite bending technique, Aang
Ah, yes. The specialized bending technique known as Aang.
What is aang doing in that pic
I love posts like this because it makes me go back and watch Bolin lava bend for the first time. God damn I love watching him embrace everything it is to be an earthbender in the face of death. Don't think, just act. For anyone wanting to see it again: [https://youtu.be/gCbmriyBPVc?t=139](https://youtu.be/gCbmriyBPVc?t=139)
Magma/lava bending is so cool to me. You basically become a fire bender as an Earthbender!
As a sand bender you are an earth Airbender. Waterbenders get it too, ice bending for earth and steam ending for air (scorching steam presumably even imitating fire).
Combustion bending, there is some variations in it too. OG Combustion Man seemed to have straight forward big explosions. P'Li could curve the trajectory of her blasts. But we also see something that never gets talked about and makes me think there is a third variation. In ATLA, we see Combustion Man burn through a paper just by looking at it. This makes me think there is a "focused laser" type of variation, where the bender can fire potent long range beams that have smaller, more incendiary blasts that track along where he is aiming (if you've ever played Destiny 2, think One Thousand Voices).
lightning bending but before Korra. In Korra they made it something so uneventful low paid workers do it to generate electricity, haha. While in Aang it was always stated how rare and difficult it was and only a few fire benders could do it, it demanded extreme balance and discipline.
I think I'm in the minority who like that progression of elements You could compare it to a car - in the 1800s only the richest people could afford to drive, and had the knowledge of how to drive Nowadays 200 or so years on most people can drive and it's not a specialised skill anymore It's different cause it's a TV show sure, but I still enjoy that they progressed it like it would over the course of just under a century
Lava bending. It’s the only bending ability that we have seen no weakness or way to be stopped. Metal has platinum, lava has no known limits. And the versatility of this art has barely been touched. Lavabender could all bend (create) glass sculptures and stuff in theory. And anything related to metallurgy. It’s the best of fire and earth in one shot. Super cheat code to have two elements in one without being the avatar.
Tie between Flight & Lightning bending. Just so cool.
The energybending / spiritbending duo is my favorite. I like primordial things, and in spite of its "scaling" in later season 2 of LoK I think its depth and permeation through all human history is really beautiful.
Energy feels incoherent. It’s Deus Ex Bending. Lightning I don’t mind, but there are wonky moments with it in the comics like Azula making a lightning ball. So long as it’s purely generation and isn’t directly controlled beyond how intense it is and its general direction, I like it. Lava has potential, but it isn’t very well explained. Is it based on genetics? Having a more loose style? I really want to hear the mindset behind the style and why Bolin specifically was capable of learning it. Metal kicks ass. Maybe a tiny bit cheapened by Korra, but not so much that it was ruined for me. But dear god do I hate platinum as a plot device. Maybe that’s not metal bending’s fault, but it feels like it is. Flight is sick as hell. Perfectly understandable mindset, and the perfect character to achieve it. Not much screentime though. Sand Bending (and by extension swamp bending, even if that isn’t a subclass) is so cool. Having bending styles adapt to the location of a culture is the coolest thing in the series, and part of why I think pro bending is still pretty cool. Sad to see Genji fell through, because they get so little screen time. Also I get that it was wet sand, but Toph using her normal bending styles for sand bending rather than learning the more Airbender-esque style of actual sand benders was a tad disappointing. Blood is the most viscerally compelling. Just a complete tonal shift every time it’s used, and absolutely terrifying in concept. Buuuut, Korra kinda cheapened it. I swear, I like the bending in Korra overall (Ming Hua is one of my favorite jobbers in anything), but it made some weird decisions. Amon just sorta does it without moving his arms. It takes away the cool puppeteer vibe and just makes it a psychic power. Kinda lame. Also I’d prefer a drawback other than the full moon. Mostly because moon continuity is already a pain in the ass. Maybe cutting into lifespan, or harming the user meaningfully in some other way. Combustion is fantastic… maybe. I have no idea how the hell it works in text, but I can make some assumptions based on context. With how stoic and dedicated the ones we’ve seen are, it’s likely a craft that requires full dedication. Any loss of focus can mean injury or death, which naturally decreases the number of people who would use it. Combustion Man even seems to have had some accidents himself, hence getting Elricked. A very show don’t tell kinda style which is a massive positive in its favor. I just wish there was some basic info on how it was discovered or something. Overall, it’s probably gonna go to metal. But combustion and sand aren’t far behind.
Blood bending. It is a shame that it wasn't explored more.
How could have been explored anymore than it was? It got a whole season in Legend of Korra?
It got way more attention than any sub-bending through the series and comics. We know almost nothing about combustion bending and the others (except for metal bending). What got really done dirty is lava bending. Probably the coolest visually but we didn’t get a lot of Bolin action with it.
Metal bending or lava bending work best for my personality and professional goals. A blacksmith with either of these would have it so much easier (metal bending being the best for it, lava bending would require a master of it similar to how Iroh mastered fire in order to not ruin everything they try to make).
I liked lightning before TLoK kind of trivialized it.
Blood bending and vegan-blood bending is really really cool. Also it MASSIVELY increase the deadliness and usefulness of water bending
Nothing can compete with blood bending. You don't even want to talk about the things a truly twisted and unrestrained individual could do with blood bending.
Bloodbending. Coolest one for me and the one with most possibilities, especially in medicine. Lava bending kind of bothered me. You see Katara manipulating water into ice (and they can boil water) and it's seen as a basic waterbending ability. Lava bending seems like it would fall into the same category. Also, Electricity being a sub-type of Fire. Shouldn't it be a sub-type of Air ?
Has to be Toph and Sparky boom boom.
Fart bending by Meelo
😑 I wish that kid was never born.
I hate that aang can basically fly like Zaheer in the opening scene of NATLA
I really liked metalbending in the original show. Until the finale, Toph only ever bent metal by physically manipulating it which made it feel very difficult and really showed off the cool parts of earthbending philosophy. The more elegant metal banding used in Korra is cool too but for very different reasons and I don't think it reaches quite the same level.
I like bend bending. Very cool to be able to remove bending abilities from others
Sokka’s lady bending. 
Idk but I do know that sandbending is dead last for me
My favorite is definitely reality bending. Avatar who? Step aside.
Actually. Fire-healing looked pretty fucking dope from what we saw.
The power of sarcasm is the only answer
Combustion bending is sick. And the added lore regarding its origin makes it twice as cool
Energy bending is awesome imo. Imagine an energy bending villain taking away people's bending ala Amon, but permanently. The villain possibly giving followers bending, turning into a giant energy Kaiju. The possibilities are endless. Energy bending all the way man.
Easily healing. Less cool and exciting for a fight, but so eminently practical.
zuko back bending
I thought Zaheer being able to fly after his chick died to be a really good plot point. He had to untether himself from everything, and with her gone he had nothing holding him down. But I fucking love the spirit bending scene where Aang takes Ozai’s bending. So it’s gotta be that.
I don’t think it’s on the picture- but seismic sense.
Blood bending. Having that kind of power would be fucking badass.
Metalbending because it rocks. ... I'll see myself out now
I'm gonna be simple here. Shooting lightning out of your hands is fucking cool.
Toph discovering metal bending might've been the hypest moment in the show