I had a teacher named Mr. Hamm hahaha anyway on topic - Katara's skill at waterbending increases exponentially every episode. It seems like she has more and more control over her powers as the show progresses. Usually when she's fighting, she only has a tiny pouchfull of water which is unfair when earthbenders have the whole earth or firebenders can geneate fire themselves. Whatever the case - neither Katara nor Zuko is superior, it's all situational.

All combat is situational. A man with a knife can beat a man with a gun. That being said a gun is a better option most of the time. The 'situation' is that ZUko in about 90% of fights they can have is the better choice.

Fire is essential to life as the Fusion Furnace that is the sun is the source of all life on our planet. PLus The debate is getting loads of places, as each person who arrives brings something new to the table in terms of their opinion, then leaves once they can no longer support their own arguements.

True. Because its an event not a thing.

It was called "The Spirit World, part 1/ Winter Solstice", and I don't think that rock was really that heavy. Even if it was, it was just hovering, it wouldn't be that hard for a martial artist to knock away.

Stone is REALLY HEAVY. The average weight of a chunk of limestone (a light stone) that size (2ft radius) is somewhere in the vicinity of 2386 pounds. Or a metric ton. Me saying 200 pounds is so incredibly generous that it borders of stupidity.

To Zukone, just to clarify, what he said was that if you are going to consider.???? Meaning that Zhao being better than Jeong Jeong was only if you were to use simplistic comparisions.??

the "stones" seemed more like dirt to me. if a small metal chain was strong enough to break it into tiny pieces, i highly doubt it's any type of stone

Even if you are using dense dirt instead of stone then the weight is going to be a minimum 1632 pounds. Which while not a metric ton is still way freaking heavy. Furthmore there is not a martial artist in the world that can shatter STEEL shackles of that size with a kick. It would take a 30 pound sledgehammer MULTIPLE blows to break that or a chisel wedge. If zuko were to really haul off and hit someone with a blow like that the effect would be the utter and instantaneous mutliation of whatever body part got hit.

it's most likely giant dirt clumps that weigh 70 pounds max

metal in that show seems pretty weak. aang froze a lock and shattered it with his wooden staff :/

If that dirt was as loose as you say then there is no way it was the slightest threat to Iroh's hands. For that stone to weigh 70 pounds it would have to weigh about 2-5 pounds per cubic foot. Do you know what weights that much? A well stuffed pillow or a roll of quarters.

Even at a miserable 90 pounds a cubic foot, the density of chalk. That boulder weighs better than a thousand pounds. Poorly forged Steel/iron is highly vulnerable to breaking along stress points at low temperatures. Though this not withstanding breaking it with your OWN FEET, is a superhuman combat feat no matter how poorly forged it is.

Zukone I interpreted it as more a self indictment. I also would have pointed out that if one is creating a barrier that covers an entire river the flame will be spread quite thin.

how about you try freezing a chain and breaking it with a wooden stick

and again, if iroh was able to break the "stones/dense dirt" into rubble with that small chain, they could not be very strong

Do you know how dense metals are? Really freaking dense is not even a slightest bit accurate. Steel is 63,000 kilograms per cubic meter. Thats about 500 pounds per cubic foot. Continueing that vein it also has self adhesion that is thousands of time that of stone. Wood is an incredible substance that can exceed metal in many ways. Bone another biological substance has greater compression to weight than steel. But you know what. I have two things on my side. First I can say that the blowing was chilling the metal and the ice was forming from the atmosphere in which case the metal would have been around 35?? K or -230 degrees celcius. Second the umbral vortex of an air bended staff head renders it capable of breaking stone, and thus most likely the air is rendered into a psuedo-liquid state and is harder than the substance it is composed of by factors of a thousands. Airbenders have alread been shown to manipulate air density.

metal is dense. so what? do you honestly really believe that a small metal chain can break a large rock into bits?

i highly doubt that aang froze that metal to 35K, and i dunno what that pseudo-liquid stuff is, but he would probably have to do it to his whole staff instead of just the head. a tool is only as strong as it's weakest point, and in "bitter work" aang said that his wooden staff was delicate