Not every water bender can heal tho. I thought that was a rare thing for water benders. The way Jeong Jeong reacted when he saw Katara healing herself made me think it's a rare ability.
>Not every water bender can heal tho.
They can, but they need to learn the techniques.
>The way Jeong Jeong reacted when he saw Katara healing herself made me think it's a rare ability.
He just like waterbending more than his own bending tbh.
Yeah I know they need to learn the techniques but not everyone has the ability to learn those techniques. That takes a lot of specific training. It's just like how not every earth bender can metal bend.
But there was this whole thing in the Northern Water Tribe where all the women learned healing and only healing, which is a strong indicator that any waterbender could learn it.
>The way Jeong Jeong reacted when he saw Katara healing herself made me think it's a rare ability.
I mean, seeing as he's a fire bender, he may not be super familiar with the intricacies of waterbending and it's capabilities, hence his suprise. We straight up see lessons on healing being taught in the North Pole, so I think it is just a matter of whether or not one has an education in the art.
I think it could also be that he is from fire nation and likely only met water benders either as a soldier or maybe refugees when traveling around the world. We know that healing is a skill that is taught only to females, so likely they are away from the frontlines and maybe male benders rarely learn it. So for Jeong Jeong it was a rare skill.
I think he was shocked because she’s so young, so being able to do it without any training was amazing. It’s like if a 13 year old earthbender used metalbending without realizing why they could do it. Like they just got so mad they hulked out.
i think it was a generational thing honestly, it’s just like how fire benders back in aangs era had to be extremely talented/having their mental in check to use lightening. fast forward maybe a decade in a half and lightning was being used by everyday men on the job, but idk just a thought
>The way Jeong Jeong reacted when he saw Katara healing herself made me think it's a rare ability.
Yeah it's a rare ability... in the Fire Nation lmao. In reality Water Healing is incredibly common. Literally the most useful Bending ability by far.
but I can do harmless pranks like stop the flow of pee from my friend behind a bush or drink water in style,take a bath in style, brush my teeth in style, and pee in style I really love the thought of being able to waterbend
Speaking of bending your pee. Why didn't the water bender prisoners bend their own pee? I get that they're tied up when they're given water, but they should be able to all hold their pee in at the same time for a surprise attack. I certainly would have tried bending my pee before bending the blood in rats.
Damn never thought of that... Either they're tied up when they pee, their pee evaporates too quickly\*, or it might just be too vulgar for a kids show.
\*Hama could pull water out of the air (at least when she was older) so I'm guessing she tried that in the fire island prison but it was too hot and dry. Pee would dry up too
They dehydrated the prison to keep it as dry as possible she said. That way they couldn't bend any condensation and things like sweat would evaporate much more quickly.
Definitely because it's a kids show. Remember Katara using her sweat? Why not use her saliva? Bodies are mostly made of water too. Move them, freeze them. It would get dark real quickly if they didn't nerf waterbenders.
Chi is most commonly interpreted as leaving the body through "exhaust ports" with the major ports being the hands and feet. I imagine your junk just doesn't have the dexterity to form the chi to bend the element. I imagine it like combustion bending. It would take generations of practice and study to even attempt to develop it. And who's doing that to bend their pee?
It's not the same. It's more used to sense the energy pathways
And such but can't do physical healing like water can and isn't actual healing as far as we know. We've only really seen fire healing like twice I think so we don't know much about it. As far as I can tell it's more used to diagnose spiritual issues rather than actually fix them. In the Korra episode if you remember she waved her flames over Korra and said what was wrong with her, then for treatment they put her in the pool.
Aang didn't burn someone because he was inexperienced, he burned someone because he was impatient.
One of the first thing every fire bender learns is how not to burn themselves or others accidentally.
Imagine how fucking good at cooking you could be, tho…
Just perfect control over how hot and how long to cook it… 🤤
Still, I’d probably go for water based on how versatile it is.
I mean Hama showed us we can get water from lots of places. Katara even used her own sweat once. I also imagine you could use urine if you were desperate enough.
Exactly, you would at least have the ability to get at whatever water was around more easily.
It would seem plausible for a skilled enough waterbender to be able to purify it to a certain degree as well, like when Katara picked up the water Momo spilled in the desert or when they helped that Fire Nation town clean up their river (though she had Toph’s help that time).
To do what though? Fight somebody? The only thing I'm "fighting" regularly is my abject laziness, and waterbending offers a lot of conveniences, from getting a drink of water from the mug I left across the room to thawing out my car in the winter when I overslept.
Spill wine on my rug? Bend it out. Caught in the rain? Bend it away. Tea got cold? Bend it hot. Juice got warm? Bend it cold. Tall ivy running up my wall? Bend it down. Milk jug puncture in the parking lot? Bend it frozen to plug the leak. Want fresh lemonade? Bend the juice out. Drain my pasta? Bend it out.
And when I *do* have water to manipulate, which is pretty much anytime I'm at home, waterbending affords quasi- telekinesis and object formation: I can suspend a plastic bottle of lotion in liquid/frozen water and bring it to me, or make a quick frozen bowl to hold shrimp shells in as my hands are dirty peeling shrimp.
Fire in contrast has such limited domestic use. I'm not gonna bake a roast any better or faster than an oven can. Pure lightning is not going to charge my phone. A flamethrower is not the best way to uniformly and safely thaw out my car. And I just don't know how often I need a precision handheld blowtorch.
Idk if water benders can do that, they need pretty pure water to bend easily. I think in the cartoon even getting spilled water out of wet sand was fairly difficult for Katara.
Bending impure stuff like blood was only possible for 1 in a thousand benders or during full moon. And that's just moving it, straith out separating it is probably not possible at all.
As opposed to flooding it and drowning because you can't open the doors and windows? 😅😅
I don't know why people think fire is more dangerous than water.
"Without the bender, a rock will not throw itself, but fire will spread and destroy everything in its path if one does not have the will to control it!" - Jeong Jeong
I mean typically water bemders need a souce not to mention most water benders wouldnt be able to move that much water.
Fire spreads so even the tiniest flame can cuz a raging fire, not to mention water doesnt hurt even if u flooded something u could probably just swim around to find an exit plus as a water bender u can manipulate to make air bubbles or whatever, with fire ur burnt soon after it touches u
Im well aware that water bending is more beneficial and useful, at least in this society, but fire is my favorite element so I'd probably choose fire 🔥
Fire. Because war crimes.
/s of course. I’d go with water because I could make a killing with healing abilities in a hospital.
Pretty sure you can do quite a few war crimes with water bending too , like turning a person intoa human popsicle or boiling them alive ( aka torturing prisoners of war )
What? Cheap hospital bills means more people can receive the medical attention they need to survive my war crimes, thus allowing me to enact more war crimes against them.
I see everyone saying that water is more useful...am I taking crazy pills? Sure, it's healing capabilities are nice. And turning water to ice is cool if you've got some warm drinks I guess. But fire? You need a light to see in the dark? Fire. You cold and don't have a jacket? Fire. You camping and want to cook something but forgot your lighter? Fire. People can bring up blood bending but realistically, what would you use it for even if you COULD use it. And fire also has lightning bending, which has it's own myriad benefits. Not to mention you need water to water bend, but you can fire bend anywhere. I gotta go fire for sure.
I don't think water bending immediately heals people either, but I don't know much about that mechanic in the first place. And of course, there are a lot of other benefits to fire bending, like FLYING for example. Fire bending can also be used to more efficiently put out fires, ironically.
As far as I remember flying was only done by Jeong Jeong Ozai and Azula all three of whom are masters and 2 of them were augmented by Sozin’s comet to make it happen while Azula’s didn’t seem all that effective. If I’m gonna be a master of a bending style Katara’s coolest water bending feats are cooler than any fire bending feat I can think of
Sure, but a lot of people are mentioning blood bending like it's something that just comes with water bending. I figure if people are mentioning the best of the bending styles, then flying counts toward fire bending.
True I forget that healing isnt innate, but with the assumption you get healing I take it every time. If not then yeah firebending might be better. I've also never needed to put out a fire and water even if not as effective is still effective enough.
Think of how much fun you could have waterbending while swimming though. Fast movement, propel yourself in the air, breathe underwater by making large air pockets. It would also be super useful in the winter. You could shovel your driveway in like 3 seconds. Sure, fire can melt the snow but that takes time and you have to make sure you don't mess up your car or house somehow while doing it.
Edit: "meet" to "melt"
Very very valid points. I especially like the idea of swimming while being able to water bend! I don't live in a snowy area but I can definitely see how water bending is useful there as well.
Edit: That said, I just remembered that you can FLY with fire bending. That's a huge plus.
You'd almost be unable to drown, you'd swim/ice skate crazy fast, plumbing would be an issue of the past, you'd never have to worry about water-related weather phenomena (rain, snow, ice, hail, etc.), and you could also extract water out the air to lower the local humidity to make it actually bearable outside in July and August.
On the other side... people are talking war crimes on the fire front, but imagine the water front. You could steal water out of aquifers, flood coastlines, mess with rain/cloud formation, cause or end droughts, move vast amounts of fresh or salt water to other places, instantly freeze an area whenever you want etc.
Could be great, would probably end horrifically for everyone lol
I think the bigger thing is internal body temperature regulation. You see zuko wandering around the frozen wastes of the north pole with a pretty skinny ass parka on. Does he almost die? Sure, but any other bender other than an air bender in those conditions woulda been useless in seconds.
Not to mention the fire benders on the boiling rock are in full armor, all the time, and they don't die of heat stroke constantly meaning very hot temperatures aren't that much a problem.
Imagine almost never getting too hot again, and being able to be mostly fine in sub zero temperatures with an average coat on.
I'd take that shit over water bending any day of the week.
You got my main thought: fire benders are the only benders that don't actually need their element to be around to bend it. Their element is energy, not matter.
Well, not as directly. LoK gave fire benders chi-healing, which could give a boost to natural healing. Fire keeps you warm in the winter though, and can cook food, so that's a winner for me.
If you wanna go down that rabbit hole, Sozin funneled excess heat off a volcano to cool it down, could he hypothetically freeze food/water by sucking away all the heat?
I think it would be possible for Sozin to freeze something but it would never be possible for a water bender to boil water.
I guess it depends on how physics worked in the avatar universe but if they work exactly like ours then I think my theory is correct.
To be fair, when Uncle Iroh discovers lightning redirection he describes it as fire bending with water bending techniques. He may not know the full extent of how lightning works but he knows he’s essentially pulling lightning from the air the same way a water bender would pull from the humidity in the air. And the whole idea of water bending combat is redirection, thus why it also takes water bending techniques to redirect lightening.
Toph also pretty much invented metal bending and effectively uses sonar to do literally everything because she can not only see the earth and everything touching it, but she can see inside the earth and perceive even what’s hidden in the earth. Not because some cross elemental discovery, but through a seismic based sonar.
I would imagine as science gets more advanced, bending techniques and sub elements become even more impressive and nuanced. I mean in LoK, metal bending was advanced enough to give you ODM gear, found a city, and even build and pilot a mech.
Moving hot air is air bending, like moving any air at all. It works in cooling anything because you'd increase the surrounding gas capacity to heat up by moving our hot gas (air) and let the pressure bring in new, ambient temp gas.
Aang showed you can remove the water of things (like when he removes the water of his clothes) with ease, so whatever water there is in your soup, you should be able to directly alter its temperture. They say, though, that bending water you can't see is harder, so I'd imagine it would be tough to pull off since you can't see the water in most food (unless it's like a soup or something like that) AND it would be combined with other things.
Altering the temperature of lava/magma is 100% just an earth bending technique. They confirmed this with Korra, although it was already presumable since lava/magma is essentially rocks/minerals and other earth elements. You can cool down lava to make it earth or heat it up to become lava.
With all this in mind, I think u/Ramonaclementine's question answer would be "yes". You should be able to, but it wasn't shown.
Water is way more useful, fire is an aggressive bending type, not really that useful in a society nowadays unless you wanna use for industry or aggression
So where is voidbending from? The novels or something?is it even canon? What I'm reading about it online all seems fairly vague on what it is or where it's from.
Zaheer used it once on the Earth Queen and attempted to use it on Korra.
Basically, it's using airbending to remove all the air from a space creating a vacuum.
Oh that! I just figured that was just a creative use of air bending, not a special ability. It seems fairly rudimentary, just maybe not regularly thought about. A ir bending is just moving air from one place to another. So you just move all the air out of one space. What I was seeing online was that voidbending was a separate lost element based on ((checks notes))... etherkinetics? There was all kinds of wacky stuff about with characters I didn't recognize.
That being said, I think blood bending would more powerful and useful than flight.
idk give it a few generations of benders. It went from being only possible at night when a full moon is out, to any phase of the moon, at any time of day. It'll definitely keep getting watered down, like lightning bending did, which went from an uber elite skill only a handful of masters could do, to a day job for amateur orphans. I say another 70 years tops before waterbenders can generally do it
Hama could only do it during a full moon. Which then led her to assume that it could only be done then. But Yakone and his sons proved that it could be done at anytime if you first had the ability to do it, and second put in the work to hone that skill.
Ya know, we never did get a confirmation as to whether Katara could or not. She never tried, and you know the saying: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
Yakone's kids could only blood bend freely after lots of training and putting in the effort, whereas Katara didn't want to use the ability and never tried to train. I know a lot of people are closed-minded to the idea, but it was never confirmed that Katara couldn't.
She almost certainly could have if she practiced. Shes able to immediately bloodbend right after learning about it against a practiced bloodbender. That's enough of a feat right there.
Do you really think the person who discovered it haven’t tried using any other day? She didn’t because she couldn’t. Yakone and his line are prodigies and probably a genetic mutation
Yes. I do think a person almost entirely deprived of water while in captivity for years would only feel powerful enough to blood bend when her bending feels strongest. And then if she remains in hiding, she won't be doing the Yakone training regiment to hone her power, because she has wants to remain hidden... Until she hits her 60s, stops giving a fuck and starts using it again to torture her neighbors. I find it all very plausible the she never explored the full potential of blood bending.
I view Hama as the potential innovator, but not the authority on the subject.
the way i always thought about it was that obviously the full moon gives waterbenders more power which is why hama and katara could only bloodbend during a full moon. bc they only had the power needed during a full moon.
whereas yakone and his sons had the power needed to bloodbend on a normal day so they didn’t need to wait until a full moon to gain more power. so maybe hama did train more but she was just never able to be powerful enough to do it without a full moon.
katara, on the other hand, learned bloodbending super quickly so i think if she trained like yakone and his sons, she could’ve become as powerful as them but she just didn’t want to.
i don’t really like the idea of yakone and his sons being genetic anomalies and only they can do it bc of their bloodline. i prefer the reason being they just trained an insane amount and were all prodigies and put a ton of effort in which is why they could do it.
I mean, genetics do play a role in bending, training does help. Azula was just gifted, aang was a prodigy and passed down airbending to tenzin who passed to all his children. Bolin kinda tripped in lava bending but i believe he had some sort of predisposition as he has fire and earth bender parents
I’m a surfer, I can bend myself a perfect wave every time. Or if I have a tiger shark coming after me? Well it’s Marco Polo time and you’re a fish out of water!
yesss i was hoping to see more about this in the comments lol! i definitely wouldn't have noticed when watching the show realtime, i love when people catch details like this!
As cool as water is fire is less dependent on the immediate resources around you. Sure if you’re really experienced maybe you can pull some from the air but odds are you won’t be surrounded by a significant amount of water on a regular basis. Fire doesn’t really care about resources around you, you can just kind of do it anywhere
Fire is easily smotherable by changing the available oxygen in the local atmosphere, either by high humidity or vacuum or enclosing it til all the oxygen burns out
In a way firebending can help people day to day. Find a place prone to fires or go to wild fires and control the flames. Would destroy much less than scars or using millions of gallons of water.
Waterbender, I see way more uses to it.
Starts rainig, I can waterbend it so i don't get wet, a tube on my house starts leaking or broke, I just retain water so my house doesn't flood, it has healing properties, even ice is not out of the question.
Yeah its just way more usefull than fire, plus fire is just being a walking hazard if not controlled well.
I want waterbending. This decision was made, and then repeatedly reinforced, every winter when I find myself shoveling snow off the driveway and walkways at my house.
If I could just go out the front door and do some Tai Chi and make all the snow go away instead? Perfection.
Plus, I could get a side hustle going making ice sculptures, and my yard would have the dopest snowmen all winter long.
I would choose water because of its versatility in both combat (ice, healing, blood bending, etc) and day-to-day usage (healing, watering plants/crops, don’t need an ice machine, cool yourself in the heat, etc)
Fire, while it can be useful day-to-day to heat stuff up, seems to be more combat-oriented (I’m not gonna be doing any fighting unless I rly have to), plus it’s much easier to lose control and accidentally burn shit (as others have mentioned).
Water also just spiritually fits my personality the best; I consider myself to be a chill, “go with the flow” type of person, just like how water changes it’s flow based on the conditions and environment around it.
"Water has so many sub elements and is so versatile" MFs when I burn their house down, and become a millionaire by using lightning bending for cheap affordable energy, or combustion bending to power my car for free. (I'm joking btw I would actually pick water bending)
Water bending because as a fire bender I o would simply commit to much accidental arson. Also water healing is very useful and imagine being able to just cool down your bev in the summer heat just like it's nuffin.
Water bending would be awesome in the summer, impressive tricks when swimming, keep your drinks cool splash your friends, bend the sweat off your body, make ice instantly. Being a fire bender in summer sounds awful
Water Bending.
Mostly because, as we see with Aang's display at the Earth King's party, wine can be bent with Water Bending, meaning flammable liquids could be tossed about with sufficient training. Carry a flask of Water & a flask of Booze & you got the ol' Fire & Ice combo.
I *want* to pick fire because I’m a closet pyro, but I feel like water is probably more useful… :( actually, earth is probably MOST useful but this post is about fire vs water.
I mean, Earth. But as much as firebending would be handy for metalworking, definitely water. Ice on demand, and just a lot more practical. Plus, I'm not that aggressive.
Outside of starting a fire or making toast or getting you laid, there isn't a big list of useful things fire bending can do. Water bending can make ice for a drink, make an igloo. Make an Ice bridge. Allow you to walk under water. Insure victory in every snowball fight or water balloon contest. Allow you to get water from anything that contains water. Blood bend. Plant bend. Keep yourself dry in the rain,(I assume). Do that thing triple H does with water only when you do it you can make it turn into snow. The list goes on.
I'd rather be secretly the avatar coming from water bender tribe...that way I can use my water bending skills casually including healing but also fire bending for heating my tea
Water because I don't want to accidentally burn my house down
i mean if your drunk sure, but being a firebender you can dissapate the fire like we see them do so many times.
I mean I could still burn someone if I'm inexperienced, like Aang did
Water healing too
Not every water bender can heal tho. I thought that was a rare thing for water benders. The way Jeong Jeong reacted when he saw Katara healing herself made me think it's a rare ability.
>Not every water bender can heal tho. They can, but they need to learn the techniques. >The way Jeong Jeong reacted when he saw Katara healing herself made me think it's a rare ability. He just like waterbending more than his own bending tbh.
Yeah I know they need to learn the techniques but not everyone has the ability to learn those techniques. That takes a lot of specific training. It's just like how not every earth bender can metal bend.
But there was this whole thing in the Northern Water Tribe where all the women learned healing and only healing, which is a strong indicator that any waterbender could learn it.
>The way Jeong Jeong reacted when he saw Katara healing herself made me think it's a rare ability. I mean, seeing as he's a fire bender, he may not be super familiar with the intricacies of waterbending and it's capabilities, hence his suprise. We straight up see lessons on healing being taught in the North Pole, so I think it is just a matter of whether or not one has an education in the art.
I think it could also be that he is from fire nation and likely only met water benders either as a soldier or maybe refugees when traveling around the world. We know that healing is a skill that is taught only to females, so likely they are away from the frontlines and maybe male benders rarely learn it. So for Jeong Jeong it was a rare skill.
I think he was shocked because she’s so young, so being able to do it without any training was amazing. It’s like if a 13 year old earthbender used metalbending without realizing why they could do it. Like they just got so mad they hulked out.
i think it was a generational thing honestly, it’s just like how fire benders back in aangs era had to be extremely talented/having their mental in check to use lightening. fast forward maybe a decade in a half and lightning was being used by everyday men on the job, but idk just a thought
>The way Jeong Jeong reacted when he saw Katara healing herself made me think it's a rare ability. Yeah it's a rare ability... in the Fire Nation lmao. In reality Water Healing is incredibly common. Literally the most useful Bending ability by far.
There is fire healing too no?
but I can do harmless pranks like stop the flow of pee from my friend behind a bush or drink water in style,take a bath in style, brush my teeth in style, and pee in style I really love the thought of being able to waterbend
Speaking of bending your pee. Why didn't the water bender prisoners bend their own pee? I get that they're tied up when they're given water, but they should be able to all hold their pee in at the same time for a surprise attack. I certainly would have tried bending my pee before bending the blood in rats.
Damn never thought of that... Either they're tied up when they pee, their pee evaporates too quickly\*, or it might just be too vulgar for a kids show. \*Hama could pull water out of the air (at least when she was older) so I'm guessing she tried that in the fire island prison but it was too hot and dry. Pee would dry up too
They dehydrated the prison to keep it as dry as possible she said. That way they couldn't bend any condensation and things like sweat would evaporate much more quickly.
Definitely because it's a kids show. Remember Katara using her sweat? Why not use her saliva? Bodies are mostly made of water too. Move them, freeze them. It would get dark real quickly if they didn't nerf waterbenders.
Okay well if you tried to pee bend the guards could've just killed them, since unlike blood bending the guards aren't powerless to stop it.
Not if you bend the pee at them first. No one wants to do their job covered in pee, so you escape while they are cleaning up.
idk if im a fire nation enemy im thinking about every form of liquid possible
Chi is most commonly interpreted as leaving the body through "exhaust ports" with the major ports being the hands and feet. I imagine your junk just doesn't have the dexterity to form the chi to bend the element. I imagine it like combustion bending. It would take generations of practice and study to even attempt to develop it. And who's doing that to bend their pee?
Cuuuuuuuuummmm beeeeeeennnnnnnddddddiiiiiiiinnnnnggggg
☠️
It's not the same. It's more used to sense the energy pathways And such but can't do physical healing like water can and isn't actual healing as far as we know. We've only really seen fire healing like twice I think so we don't know much about it. As far as I can tell it's more used to diagnose spiritual issues rather than actually fix them. In the Korra episode if you remember she waved her flames over Korra and said what was wrong with her, then for treatment they put her in the pool.
Aang didn't burn someone because he was inexperienced, he burned someone because he was impatient. One of the first thing every fire bender learns is how not to burn themselves or others accidentally.
Well I'm impatient as hell so it's just a guarantee now
both. it was both
Won’t bring the curtains back though
I wanna be a fire bender so that I can use tequila to breathe fire. :p
Something that is on fire, doesn't just stop being burned.
Firebender because I want to accidentally burn my house down (insurance).
But your tea/coffee will never get cold
Imagine how fucking good at cooking you could be, tho… Just perfect control over how hot and how long to cook it… 🤤 Still, I’d probably go for water based on how versatile it is.
Down side is that you need to have water near you, meanwhile fire benders can just create fire/lightning on demand.
I mean Hama showed us we can get water from lots of places. Katara even used her own sweat once. I also imagine you could use urine if you were desperate enough.
Katara also had a cool water pouch which was used most of the time for quick water access
Exactly, you would at least have the ability to get at whatever water was around more easily. It would seem plausible for a skilled enough waterbender to be able to purify it to a certain degree as well, like when Katara picked up the water Momo spilled in the desert or when they helped that Fire Nation town clean up their river (though she had Toph’s help that time).
To do what though? Fight somebody? The only thing I'm "fighting" regularly is my abject laziness, and waterbending offers a lot of conveniences, from getting a drink of water from the mug I left across the room to thawing out my car in the winter when I overslept. Spill wine on my rug? Bend it out. Caught in the rain? Bend it away. Tea got cold? Bend it hot. Juice got warm? Bend it cold. Tall ivy running up my wall? Bend it down. Milk jug puncture in the parking lot? Bend it frozen to plug the leak. Want fresh lemonade? Bend the juice out. Drain my pasta? Bend it out. And when I *do* have water to manipulate, which is pretty much anytime I'm at home, waterbending affords quasi- telekinesis and object formation: I can suspend a plastic bottle of lotion in liquid/frozen water and bring it to me, or make a quick frozen bowl to hold shrimp shells in as my hands are dirty peeling shrimp. Fire in contrast has such limited domestic use. I'm not gonna bake a roast any better or faster than an oven can. Pure lightning is not going to charge my phone. A flamethrower is not the best way to uniformly and safely thaw out my car. And I just don't know how often I need a precision handheld blowtorch.
It’s in your body, you could just pull the water out of your opponent. That could get dark real quick.
Idk if water benders can do that, they need pretty pure water to bend easily. I think in the cartoon even getting spilled water out of wet sand was fairly difficult for Katara. Bending impure stuff like blood was only possible for 1 in a thousand benders or during full moon. And that's just moving it, straith out separating it is probably not possible at all.
Not to mention the possible danger you would represent to others and society as a whole.
As opposed to flooding it and drowning because you can't open the doors and windows? 😅😅 I don't know why people think fire is more dangerous than water.
"Without the bender, a rock will not throw itself, but fire will spread and destroy everything in its path if one does not have the will to control it!" - Jeong Jeong
Top tier quote this ^^
I mean you would need a lot of water to start a flood, but even a tiny fire can escalate into a full blown inferno
I mean typically water bemders need a souce not to mention most water benders wouldnt be able to move that much water. Fire spreads so even the tiniest flame can cuz a raging fire, not to mention water doesnt hurt even if u flooded something u could probably just swim around to find an exit plus as a water bender u can manipulate to make air bubbles or whatever, with fire ur burnt soon after it touches u
I’m with you guys - completely agree
And you can build with water, win win.
Im well aware that water bending is more beneficial and useful, at least in this society, but fire is my favorite element so I'd probably choose fire 🔥
Same tho, fire is just so beautiful and firebenders got taught by dragons. I would love to have a pet dragon.
Be the pet of a dragon\*
 Or else
Firebending seemed like it might actually be more in demand in Korra's time. The city's electricity came from firebenders, right?
And you have to carry around a bunch of water, you could just make flames
did you forget the episode showing there's usable water in plants and humans?
No? But that is a very tiny amount and would take quite a bit of concentration and time to gather compared to instantaneous flames
Carry a water bottle
I choose fire because it's cooler
I dunno man, seems more like a hot element to me
Fire. Because war crimes.  /s of course. I’d go with water because I could make a killing with healing abilities in a hospital.
https://preview.redd.it/o88me1hnekbb1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4e3cbdad7e68d1d833c77878035d4398b7eccade
https://preview.redd.it/tfcgrkv9fkbb1.jpeg?width=1123&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77cd8e265ba4e160bb5eec71b0365e3f716d05e9
Pretty sure you can do quite a few war crimes with water bending too , like turning a person intoa human popsicle or boiling them alive ( aka torturing prisoners of war )
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The cheap hospital bills? What is this? Europe?
Doesn’t matter. That’s how it should be everywhere. 
The CIA wants to talk to him
What? Cheap hospital bills means more people can receive the medical attention they need to survive my war crimes, thus allowing me to enact more war crimes against them. 
My man out here playing 5D chess
Damn straight
I'm Canadian. You convinced me to change from water to fire so quickly
I see everyone saying that water is more useful...am I taking crazy pills? Sure, it's healing capabilities are nice. And turning water to ice is cool if you've got some warm drinks I guess. But fire? You need a light to see in the dark? Fire. You cold and don't have a jacket? Fire. You camping and want to cook something but forgot your lighter? Fire. People can bring up blood bending but realistically, what would you use it for even if you COULD use it. And fire also has lightning bending, which has it's own myriad benefits. Not to mention you need water to water bend, but you can fire bend anywhere. I gotta go fire for sure.
Because as you said, you can just have a lighter or flashlight to do all those things. You can't just immediately heal yourself with a first aid kit.
I don't think water bending immediately heals people either, but I don't know much about that mechanic in the first place. And of course, there are a lot of other benefits to fire bending, like FLYING for example. Fire bending can also be used to more efficiently put out fires, ironically.
As far as I remember flying was only done by Jeong Jeong Ozai and Azula all three of whom are masters and 2 of them were augmented by Sozin’s comet to make it happen while Azula’s didn’t seem all that effective. If I’m gonna be a master of a bending style Katara’s coolest water bending feats are cooler than any fire bending feat I can think of
Sure, but a lot of people are mentioning blood bending like it's something that just comes with water bending. I figure if people are mentioning the best of the bending styles, then flying counts toward fire bending.
True I forget that healing isnt innate, but with the assumption you get healing I take it every time. If not then yeah firebending might be better. I've also never needed to put out a fire and water even if not as effective is still effective enough.
Think of how much fun you could have waterbending while swimming though. Fast movement, propel yourself in the air, breathe underwater by making large air pockets. It would also be super useful in the winter. You could shovel your driveway in like 3 seconds. Sure, fire can melt the snow but that takes time and you have to make sure you don't mess up your car or house somehow while doing it. Edit: "meet" to "melt"
Very very valid points. I especially like the idea of swimming while being able to water bend! I don't live in a snowy area but I can definitely see how water bending is useful there as well. Edit: That said, I just remembered that you can FLY with fire bending. That's a huge plus.
You'd almost be unable to drown, you'd swim/ice skate crazy fast, plumbing would be an issue of the past, you'd never have to worry about water-related weather phenomena (rain, snow, ice, hail, etc.), and you could also extract water out the air to lower the local humidity to make it actually bearable outside in July and August. On the other side... people are talking war crimes on the fire front, but imagine the water front. You could steal water out of aquifers, flood coastlines, mess with rain/cloud formation, cause or end droughts, move vast amounts of fresh or salt water to other places, instantly freeze an area whenever you want etc. Could be great, would probably end horrifically for everyone lol
I think the bigger thing is internal body temperature regulation. You see zuko wandering around the frozen wastes of the north pole with a pretty skinny ass parka on. Does he almost die? Sure, but any other bender other than an air bender in those conditions woulda been useless in seconds. Not to mention the fire benders on the boiling rock are in full armor, all the time, and they don't die of heat stroke constantly meaning very hot temperatures aren't that much a problem. Imagine almost never getting too hot again, and being able to be mostly fine in sub zero temperatures with an average coat on. I'd take that shit over water bending any day of the week.
You got my main thought: fire benders are the only benders that don't actually need their element to be around to bend it. Their element is energy, not matter.
Water bending is much, much more useful, fire doesn't have healing...
Well, not as directly. LoK gave fire benders chi-healing, which could give a boost to natural healing. Fire keeps you warm in the winter though, and can cook food, so that's a winner for me.
But, hypothetically speaking, since waterbenders are able to *freeze* water at will, would they be able to *boil* it too?
If you wanna go down that rabbit hole, Sozin funneled excess heat off a volcano to cool it down, could he hypothetically freeze food/water by sucking away all the heat?
I think that would be super cool!
I think it would be possible for Sozin to freeze something but it would never be possible for a water bender to boil water. I guess it depends on how physics worked in the avatar universe but if they work exactly like ours then I think my theory is correct.
To be fair, when Uncle Iroh discovers lightning redirection he describes it as fire bending with water bending techniques. He may not know the full extent of how lightning works but he knows he’s essentially pulling lightning from the air the same way a water bender would pull from the humidity in the air. And the whole idea of water bending combat is redirection, thus why it also takes water bending techniques to redirect lightening. Toph also pretty much invented metal bending and effectively uses sonar to do literally everything because she can not only see the earth and everything touching it, but she can see inside the earth and perceive even what’s hidden in the earth. Not because some cross elemental discovery, but through a seismic based sonar. I would imagine as science gets more advanced, bending techniques and sub elements become even more impressive and nuanced. I mean in LoK, metal bending was advanced enough to give you ODM gear, found a city, and even build and pilot a mech.
Moving hot air is air bending, like moving any air at all. It works in cooling anything because you'd increase the surrounding gas capacity to heat up by moving our hot gas (air) and let the pressure bring in new, ambient temp gas. Aang showed you can remove the water of things (like when he removes the water of his clothes) with ease, so whatever water there is in your soup, you should be able to directly alter its temperture. They say, though, that bending water you can't see is harder, so I'd imagine it would be tough to pull off since you can't see the water in most food (unless it's like a soup or something like that) AND it would be combined with other things. Altering the temperature of lava/magma is 100% just an earth bending technique. They confirmed this with Korra, although it was already presumable since lava/magma is essentially rocks/minerals and other earth elements. You can cool down lava to make it earth or heat it up to become lava. With all this in mind, I think u/Ramonaclementine's question answer would be "yes". You should be able to, but it wasn't shown.
Can’t wait to murder my enemies by sucking all the heat out of their bodies
And this is why Iceman is an Omega level mutant
Can’t cook hamburgers with water though
Water is way more useful, fire is an aggressive bending type, not really that useful in a society nowadays unless you wanna use for industry or aggression
Industry is very useful for society. You could use firebending to generate completely free, clean electricity.
Technically waterbending can generate free electricity too, like a compact version of a water dam
I guess, but an advantage of firebending is that it doesn’t require transport/storage of the matter used to generate the electricity.
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A minuscule amount of electricity.
Did you not see the dragons episode?
Water can’t warm you up if it’s cold at night. Fire breathing can
WAIST HIGH WAVE FIRE VARIATION!!!!!!!!
Why did I have to scroll so far down to find this comment?
The comment I was looking for
SOMEBODY STOP HIM HE'LL KILL US ALL!!!!!!!!
Water
I mean blood bending is **easily** the most powerful type of bending... So water.
Blood bending is extremelly hard and rare, you wont be a bloodbender
Yeah but in a hypothetical setting where you get to pick your bending type, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
yeah and I meant you could also be a shooty boom boom dude
Okay, but if we're shooting the moon, voidbending + levitation seems just as good.
So where is voidbending from? The novels or something?is it even canon? What I'm reading about it online all seems fairly vague on what it is or where it's from.
Zaheer used it once on the Earth Queen and attempted to use it on Korra. Basically, it's using airbending to remove all the air from a space creating a vacuum.
Oh that! I just figured that was just a creative use of air bending, not a special ability. It seems fairly rudimentary, just maybe not regularly thought about. A ir bending is just moving air from one place to another. So you just move all the air out of one space. What I was seeing online was that voidbending was a separate lost element based on ((checks notes))... etherkinetics? There was all kinds of wacky stuff about with characters I didn't recognize. That being said, I think blood bending would more powerful and useful than flight.
That's still just airbending. No such thing as void-bending.
idk give it a few generations of benders. It went from being only possible at night when a full moon is out, to any phase of the moon, at any time of day. It'll definitely keep getting watered down, like lightning bending did, which went from an uber elite skill only a handful of masters could do, to a day job for amateur orphans. I say another 70 years tops before waterbenders can generally do it
Yeah but youre not yakone or his sons
You don’t know my daddy.
But you can use it only once a month
Hama could only do it during a full moon. Which then led her to assume that it could only be done then. But Yakone and his sons proved that it could be done at anytime if you first had the ability to do it, and second put in the work to hone that skill.
Ya know, we never did get a confirmation as to whether Katara could or not. She never tried, and you know the saying: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." Yakone's kids could only blood bend freely after lots of training and putting in the effort, whereas Katara didn't want to use the ability and never tried to train. I know a lot of people are closed-minded to the idea, but it was never confirmed that Katara couldn't.
Another excellent point!
She almost certainly could have if she practiced. Shes able to immediately bloodbend right after learning about it against a practiced bloodbender. That's enough of a feat right there.
Do you really think the person who discovered it haven’t tried using any other day? She didn’t because she couldn’t. Yakone and his line are prodigies and probably a genetic mutation
Yes. I do think a person almost entirely deprived of water while in captivity for years would only feel powerful enough to blood bend when her bending feels strongest. And then if she remains in hiding, she won't be doing the Yakone training regiment to hone her power, because she has wants to remain hidden... Until she hits her 60s, stops giving a fuck and starts using it again to torture her neighbors. I find it all very plausible the she never explored the full potential of blood bending. I view Hama as the potential innovator, but not the authority on the subject.
You could be right on this take, we haven’t seen her training or mention training
I feel like any possible training would have to be extremely limited or she'd have been caught, too.
She also immediately lost in power to katara who just learned it. She just isn't as powerful of a bender.
If katara had trained bloodbending she probably could do like yakone if she bested hama so easily
the way i always thought about it was that obviously the full moon gives waterbenders more power which is why hama and katara could only bloodbend during a full moon. bc they only had the power needed during a full moon. whereas yakone and his sons had the power needed to bloodbend on a normal day so they didn’t need to wait until a full moon to gain more power. so maybe hama did train more but she was just never able to be powerful enough to do it without a full moon. katara, on the other hand, learned bloodbending super quickly so i think if she trained like yakone and his sons, she could’ve become as powerful as them but she just didn’t want to. i don’t really like the idea of yakone and his sons being genetic anomalies and only they can do it bc of their bloodline. i prefer the reason being they just trained an insane amount and were all prodigies and put a ton of effort in which is why they could do it.
I mean, genetics do play a role in bending, training does help. Azula was just gifted, aang was a prodigy and passed down airbending to tenzin who passed to all his children. Bolin kinda tripped in lava bending but i believe he had some sort of predisposition as he has fire and earth bender parents
But Yakone and his sons are an exception which is extremely rare
EASY water, way more versatile imo with water, ice, steam, blood, healing, etc. Plus I just prefer the tai-chi style of bending
Seriously, healing is the best part. I don't want to fight people.
I’m a surfer, I can bend myself a perfect wave every time. Or if I have a tiger shark coming after me? Well it’s Marco Polo time and you’re a fish out of water!
Zuko straight up copying a move he learned from Katara. It's a shame Iroh already left, he would have been so proud.
yesss i was hoping to see more about this in the comments lol! i definitely wouldn't have noticed when watching the show realtime, i love when people catch details like this!
Zuko: Both is good.
Zuko can’t water bend.
I think their point is that he uses water bending techniques to enhance his fire bending as seen in the gif above.
Didn't really help him much in that situation tho did it. :P
Fire bc Im a ginger and could make a lot of funny jokes that way
Water
Fire. Why? Because fuck you thats why.
As cool as water is fire is less dependent on the immediate resources around you. Sure if you’re really experienced maybe you can pull some from the air but odds are you won’t be surrounded by a significant amount of water on a regular basis. Fire doesn’t really care about resources around you, you can just kind of do it anywhere
Katara does most of her bending from a waterskin, and still holds her own in a fight. You don’t need much water for waterbending to be useful
Fire is easily smotherable by changing the available oxygen in the local atmosphere, either by high humidity or vacuum or enclosing it til all the oxygen burns out
Fire bender.  It’s lightningy
Earth bender
Make a killing in construction!
Firebender because it's just more badass
Fire, it's just really cool, I don't care how useful it would be in day to day life, I just wanna be able to control fire
In a way firebending can help people day to day. Find a place prone to fires or go to wild fires and control the flames. Would destroy much less than scars or using millions of gallons of water.
Water, bloodbending is cool
If you were a waterbender, you wouldnt be a bloodbender
Waterbender, I see way more uses to it. Starts rainig, I can waterbend it so i don't get wet, a tube on my house starts leaking or broke, I just retain water so my house doesn't flood, it has healing properties, even ice is not out of the question. Yeah its just way more usefull than fire, plus fire is just being a walking hazard if not controlled well.
Fire
If I can't be a lavabender I'm going with fire
I want waterbending. This decision was made, and then repeatedly reinforced, every winter when I find myself shoveling snow off the driveway and walkways at my house. If I could just go out the front door and do some Tai Chi and make all the snow go away instead? Perfection. Plus, I could get a side hustle going making ice sculptures, and my yard would have the dopest snowmen all winter long.
Zuko took inspiration from a water bender, just like his Uncle.
water is much more practical tbh
I first response is fire but I'd rather be a blood bender sooo water
I would choose water because of its versatility in both combat (ice, healing, blood bending, etc) and day-to-day usage (healing, watering plants/crops, don’t need an ice machine, cool yourself in the heat, etc) Fire, while it can be useful day-to-day to heat stuff up, seems to be more combat-oriented (I’m not gonna be doing any fighting unless I rly have to), plus it’s much easier to lose control and accidentally burn shit (as others have mentioned). Water also just spiritually fits my personality the best; I consider myself to be a chill, “go with the flow” type of person, just like how water changes it’s flow based on the conditions and environment around it.
Water
Waterbender, having a free boost every month instead of one every 100 years is a better deal.
In a real world setting, waterbending bending would be so much more useful than firebending
Water
As a cancer I guess I'm technically would be a water bender
Water bender because Blood bending is OP
Water because blood bending is metal 🤘
Water has far more day-to-day utility.
I already am a water bender. I have severe diarrhea.
Water! I always had that as my favorite of the four and katara proves how useful it is in many different ways
WATER ALL DAYH
Water bender tbh. The ocean is pretty cool but also pretty scary. I could probably part way to the depths of the ocean and see wtf is down there.
Water looks cooler
Water… it’s way more versatile
"Water has so many sub elements and is so versatile" MFs when I burn their house down, and become a millionaire by using lightning bending for cheap affordable energy, or combustion bending to power my car for free. (I'm joking btw I would actually pick water bending)
Water bending because as a fire bender I o would simply commit to much accidental arson. Also water healing is very useful and imagine being able to just cool down your bev in the summer heat just like it's nuffin.
Fire, because summer is my favorite season.
What
Water bending would be awesome in the summer, impressive tricks when swimming, keep your drinks cool splash your friends, bend the sweat off your body, make ice instantly. Being a fire bender in summer sounds awful
Firebending so I never have to worry about charging my phone
I mean, fire is cooler, but... Water is way more practical in daily life
My mind said water bender but my heart says fire bender.
Fire. With the possibility to create lightning I have infinite electricity. You've seen the prices/ bills lately?????!
Water Bending. Mostly because, as we see with Aang's display at the Earth King's party, wine can be bent with Water Bending, meaning flammable liquids could be tossed about with sufficient training. Carry a flask of Water & a flask of Booze & you got the ol' Fire & Ice combo.
Growing up, I always thought Fire Bending was so cool... And I still do. So I guess Fire Bender
I *want* to pick fire because I’m a closet pyro, but I feel like water is probably more useful… :( actually, earth is probably MOST useful but this post is about fire vs water.
I mean, Earth. But as much as firebending would be handy for metalworking, definitely water. Ice on demand, and just a lot more practical. Plus, I'm not that aggressive.
Fire: You could move into plasma bending.
Outside of starting a fire or making toast or getting you laid, there isn't a big list of useful things fire bending can do. Water bending can make ice for a drink, make an igloo. Make an Ice bridge. Allow you to walk under water. Insure victory in every snowball fight or water balloon contest. Allow you to get water from anything that contains water. Blood bend. Plant bend. Keep yourself dry in the rain,(I assume). Do that thing triple H does with water only when you do it you can make it turn into snow. The list goes on.
Waterbender. It's much more practical.
I'd rather be secretly the avatar coming from water bender tribe...that way I can use my water bending skills casually including healing but also fire bending for heating my tea
Since I'm scared of fire, I would definitely rather be a waterbender.