Avatar: All Bending Types, Ranked

Every Bending Type in Avatar is powerful on its own, but here's how they all rank against each other in terms of their efficiency and flexibility.

The legendary series, Avatar: The Last Airbender introduced the basic bending techniques not just as a showcase of elemental power but as art forms that intertwine the Four Great Nations and their dynamics.

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However, with the expansion of the Avatar franchise, the series creators incorporated these bending techniques in a way the fans loved. They did that by introducing different sub-skills or making rare bending techniques more common in the form of Ghazan's exceptional Lava bending or Metal bending used by the Republic City Police. We were also able to witness gruesome battles involving diverse bending techniques showcasing the strength of every element and how these bending types can be ranked in terms of how powerful or versatile they can be during a fight.

Air bending stands out as a harmonic and free-spirited art form at its core, as preached by the air nomads that taught Aang. It allows its users to control the air movement around them, which translates in combat to benders creating powerful gusts of wind that can be thrown onto an opponent with tremendous force.

Traditional air benders possessed a non-violent philosophy, restricting their bending abilities only to defense and evasion, which led to very few strong Air benders. Air benders like Aang and Tenzin personify peace and detachment, embracing the tranquility that the element possesses.

A true manifestation of Tai Chi martial arts, water bending, is an elegant bending technique that works through spiritual alignment. Water bending allows skilled benders to command water bodies to defend themselves or attack and even aid in healing.

Water bending revolves around redirecting inner energies, or chi, which is arduous to master for this very reason and requires years of training to perfect. Katara reigning as the series' best water benders, exemplifies the grace inherited by water bending while being chaotic when required.

Metal bending is a unique Earth-bending sub-style that allows earth benders to bend metals according to their will kinetically. Metal benders possess absolute mastery over metallic objects, including weapons and machinery.

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Toph Beifong, a prodigy of her time, invented the technique herself because her seismic sense developed a deep connection with the things she interacted with, allowing her to discover that metal bending was possible. In The Legend of Korra, Toph establishes the Beifong Metal Bending Academy, where she passes down this technique to other Earth benders because of its versatility in combat as well as its practical uses.

Earth bending is an unyielding bending style known to the tough-as-nails Earth Kingdom. According to the Legend, the first human Earth benders: Oma and Shu, learned it from the Badgermoles, who used seismic waves to maneuver through pitch-dark underground channels.

Being an epitome of strength, Earth bending enables its practitioners to control rocks, stones, and even minerals with tremendous precision. From the unorthodox fighting styles of King Bumi and Toph, you can witness the power of Earth bending at its core, and their only weakness is shown to be the absence of Earth, which is usually rare.

Among the basic elemental bending styles, fire bending dominates due to the nature of fire itself. The people of the Fire Nation utilize fire bending to generate fire from within, which means that it’s the only form of bending where the bender themselves create the element.

Fire benders like Azula manage to form blue fire when bending, while Iroh can fire bend even through his mouth. Firelord Ozai uses his fire-bending abilities to hover around, showing that Fire has the most potential to adapt. Due to the presence of the Sun as the ultimate source of fire bending, it is arguably an omnipotent technique that aided Fire Lord Sozin in creating an empire that lasted more than 100 years.

Combustion bending, a telekinetic form of Fire bending, is one of the deadliest bending techniques to have been used in the series. It involves channeling chi via a third eye tattoo on the forehead, forming explosive energy blasts. These blasts, when aimed perfectly, can be devastating.

Combustion blasts can demolish anything in their path, even solid rocks. In the Avatarverse, only two characters are shown to be the users of this technique, the Combustion Man and a member of Red Lotus, P’Li. Traditionally, these combustion benders are not considered fire benders, but they stand out as their own category.

For fans of Avatar: The Legend of Korra, the art of bending molten lava is seen as iconic since it was teased in The Last Airbender with an Avatar Kyoshi flashback and finally shown with Ghazan, a member of the red lotus who was an expert Lava bender.

This sub-style of Earth-bending requires a profound understanding of the Earth and Fire elements since, fundamentally, it's supposed to be a combination of the two. Avatar Kyoshi used lava bending to defeat Emperor Chin when he tried to capture her peninsula, separating the entire island and moving away from the continent, showing just how deadly the art can be. In the Legend of Korra, Bolin also excels in this technique during the final seasons making Lava bending one of the more powerful bending sub-techniques to have existed.

Lightning manipulation is a lethal bending art associated with fire benders, which enables them to deliver a single yet incapacitating lightning bolt. Lightning Manipulation is extremely hard to master and requires benders to tame their yin and yang energies to where they can channel them through their fingertips.

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In the series, only a few characters have been able to harness this bending style, including Zuko, Avatar Aang, Azula, and Uncle Iroh. Exceptional lightning users, Firelord Ozai and Mako, could strike lightning without a second thought. The mastery over lightning flaunted by these characters signifies the best of the best in fire bending.

A controversial dark art, Blood bending allows water benders to govern the intricate networks of body fluids coursing within humans, manipulating their movements with finesse. Hama developed this version of water bending to free herself from the imprisonment of the Fire Nation.

The Last Air Bender also featured a gripping showdown between Katara and Hama, where Katara reluctantly uses Blood bending to save Aang and Sokka from Hama's clutches. Later in the Legend of Korra, the crime lord Yakone becomes the first ever individual to blood-bend without the Full Moon. Although extremely powerful, following the end of the Hundred-Year War, the United Republic of Nations outlawed this technique due to its immoral nature.

Before the inception of the four elemental bending techniques, the ancient lion turtles possessed the ability to bend spiritual energy within humans, and through these wise creatures' the first-ever Avatar to master energy bending was Aang.

This spiritual technique manipulates internal life forces, endowing or stripping benders of their abilities. During the final acts of the battle against the Fire Nation, Aang, hesitant to end Fire Lord Ozai’s life, uses energy bending to tap within Ozai’s chi paths, permanently draining his fire-bending abilities and marking the end of the Hundred Years' War. Later Avatar Korra also exhibits this extraordinary technique, continuing the legacy of transcendence over elemental limitations, thus making it one of the show's most powerful abilities.

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Umair's a gaming enthusiast who loves to play through artistic Indie Games and delve deep into the lore of whatever Anime he's watching at the time.