Avatar: 10 Benders With Unique Skills

In the world of Avatar, lucky individuals are born with the ability to manipulate water, earth, fire, or air, and in The Legend of Korra, people didn’t even have to be born with the ability to bend air after Harmonic Convergence. While there are many skilled warriors who’ve mastered their unqiue bending arts, there are also a whole array of benders introduced in both Avatar and The Legend of Korra that are not only masters in their particular bending art, but possess unique skills that no other benders possess, despite bending the same element.

Below are just ten examples of benders who stood out given the fact that they can do things that no one else could even attempt to replicate. Though they may not be the strongest benders around, they’ve all made names for themselves as pioneers.

10 Azula (Blue Flames)

Azula was a Firebending pro who was dangerous not only due to her polished technique but also her cunning that enabled her to escape some truly harrowing situations. Of course, one thing that makes her stand out above all other Firebenders was her ability to generate blue flames.

Every other Firebender across the franchise could only produce standard orange flames, and yet Azula was able to utilize blue fire, which is known to burn hotter than orange. This automatically set her apart from Firebenders who were far more powerful than her, like Roku, Ozai, and Iroh,

9 Toph (Seismic Sense)

While Toph passed on her Seismic Sense technique to Aang, as well as her two daughters Lin and Suyin, she developed the technique as a way to see without her eyes, essentially always having it activated, unlike others who had to tap into their Earthbending in a conscious effort to use it. Toph’s Seismic Sense allowed her to detect the tiniest vibrations and changes in the Earth, meaning that she could construct a picture in her mind of her surroundings without having to see them at all.

She used this ability to see hidden structures underground, detect whether or not someone was lying, and even tell when someone was approaching from several feet away. Without her Seismic Sense, she would’ve never learned how to manipulate the tiny pieces of earth within even the most refined metal.

8 Zaheer (Flight)

Despite not being born an Airbender, Zaheer possessed an instinctive grasp of his new abilities in the weeks following Harmonic Convergence. Though his battle against Tenzin showed that he was no match for a seasoned Airbending master all on his own, he’d discovered several uses for Airbending that the more pacifist Airbenders of the past never even thought of.

After losing his girlfriend P’Li, he managed to unlock the ancient Airbending ability of flight, something which not even Air Nomad Avatars like Aang or Yangchen were capable of without the aid of an air sphere. This ability not only made him near-impossible to pursue, but it made him a real pain to fight, given the fact that no one was prepared to fight an airborne opponent.

7 Ghazan (Lavabending)

While Bolin became a Lavabender after witnessing Ghazan do it, and both Avatar Kyoshi and Roku demonstrated their ability to do so before it was officially given a name, Ghazan gets credit for being the first Earthbender to actually incorporate Lavabending into his technique.

He figured out how to create lava from pure rock itself, somehow heating it to such high temperatures in a matter of seconds. He even managed to create a shuriken of molten rock that he used during his prison escape, becoming one of the first benders to create a useable weapon out of their element.

6 Combustion Man / P’Li (Combustionbending)

It hasn’t been confirmed if Combustion Man and P’Li are related, but the fact that they share such a similar ability hints that they may also share an ancestor somewhere down the line. Both Firebenders possessed an eye-shaped tattoo on their foreheads that they used to send an explosive beam of energy at whatever target they happened to be facing.

P’Li was even able to curve her beams, making her more lethal than her predecessor.

5 Jinora (Spiritual Projection)

Airbenders are known for their spirituality, so much so that every child born to Air Nomad parents is automatically able to bend air. It makes sense that a skilled Airbender like Jinora would be blessed with such a high level of spiritual awareness, but her affinity for spiritual projection is something that no other Airbender in the series has demonstrated.

Jinora possesses the unique ability to separate her spirit from her body with relative ease, enabling her to communicate with others across vast distances and perform espionage, traveling through walls and other structures in order to locate specific people or things. Though this ability isn’t too useful in a battle, it’s one that enables Jinora to support Team Avatar in ways that no one else can.

4 Ming-Hua (Armless Waterbending)

Since bending is based on martial arts, it involves specific movements of the hands and feet. Fans were already familiar with a bender like Toph who turned what should’ve been a disability into her greatest strength, but nothing could have prepared fans for The Legend of Korra‘s Ming-Hua, the Waterbending member of the Red Lotus.

Despite lacking arms, she was still able to bend water in order to give herself tendrils that not only elongated her reach beyond what’s normal for a person with arms, but in freezing the tips, she was able to create icy blades that could be used to climb and kill.

3 Yakone (Psychic Bloodbending)

For fans of The Legend of Korra, Bloodbending wasn’t anything new. In Book 3 of Avatar, they’d seen Hama’s use of this dark bending technique, as well as Katara’s brief use of it to save Sokka and Aang during her fight with the Waterbending witch. The technique was extremely powerful, but it wasn’t an accessible one, since it could only be used during a full moon, when a Waterbender’s strength was at its peak.

In Korra’s flashbacks of Aang’s life, fans saw how the criminal Waterbender Yakone was able to Bloodbend multiple people at any time, even without the use of his hands! This psychic Bloodbending ability made him a danger to everyone around him, and if it wasn’t for Aang’s mastery of the Avatar State along with his own ability to take away the bending of others, there wouldn’t be a bender alive who could stop Yakone.

2 Amon (Bending Severing)

Amon, otherwise known by his true name, Noatak, was Korra’s first antagonist during as the Avatar. He too possessed his father’s ability to Bloodbend without the aid of a full moon, and took it a step further in using it to permanently take away someone’s bending.

His advantage came in his opponents knowing what he could do. This knowledge was often enough to throw them off their game during fights. Before Amon, it was only believed that an Avatar or Lion Turtle could perform such a feat, but Amon figured out a way to utilize his Waterbending, making it easy to believe his claims that he’d been touched by the spirits.

1 Aang / Korra (Energybending)

Aang was the first person onscreen to utilize Energybending, a form of bending that doesn’t directly involve manipulating one of the four elements, but spiritual energy instead. He did so when he permanently took away Ozai’s Firebending, and in The Legend of Korra, he did the same to Yakone in a flashback, not to mention his spirit restored Korra’s bending so that she could likewise restore the bending of others.

Despite being less spiritual than Aang, Korra used Energybending in many other occasions, like when she was able to tap into the cosmic energy of the universe to fight UnaVaatu, or when she saved Kuvira from a beam of spirit energy and managed to prevent it from vaporizing the both of them. While it looks like Energybending is an ability accessible only to Avatars, that essentially makes it one of the rarest abilities in the entire franchise.

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