8

Water has the ability to heal, earth can bend metals, and fire has lightning. I am not sure if I missed what air had if it has any sub skills.

Hakubex
  • 91
  • 1
  • 5
  • 4
    mmm you can fly, you can cut things, you can make a fog with it, you can make a air ball to ride on... not sure any would fit as a sub skill. – Prix Jul 26 '14 at 03:10
  • The sub-skill of airbending, is I would say what Jinora can do with her spirit although it hasn't been confirmed. – Izumi-reiLuLu Jul 26 '14 at 03:17
  • @Prix Flying would be the obvious option as the Air Ball is like a step down from flying (hovering) and the Airbender Monks, if i recall, bread Sky Bisons which have the innate ability to fly. Cutting things can be done with Water Bending and a fog can be manipulated by Wind however would probably be created by Water – Memor-X Jul 27 '14 at 22:38
  • I thought that bloodbending was typically considered the "sub-skill" of waterbending? – senshin Jul 28 '14 at 08:43
  • @senshin it is a sub-skill. Also its revealed that combustion and lava bending are rare sub-skills. I wouldn't be surprised if this season (3) they show us an Air subskill since its kind of about airbenders and the Red Lotus (most of whom have unique skills) have an extremely skilled airbender (Zaheer). – Quikstryke Jul 30 '14 at 15:12
  • @Hakubex seems season 3 introduced unassisted flying as an Airbender subskill. – Quikstryke Aug 28 '14 at 14:20

3 Answers3

7

Each sub-skill is a relatively rare skill compared to the population of that type of bending that requires special training (with one exception) to learn. As the population of air benders has been tiny and many nuanced details of the form have been lost over the centuries. Aang was a good airbender but likely didn't know everything as he was a child. From this we can speculate that if there was one, it may have been lost.

I have not found an example in Avatar nor Korra but I'm a little behind on Korra (which is why I didn't answer quickly).

We can speculate many different interestng ways manipulating air could be specialized for different uses: sound bending, foam bending, breathe stealing, rapid oxidation, elemental separation, forcible phase transition (that could get gory), etc. This, however, would not have any canon support.

kaine
  • 5,244
  • 3
  • 26
  • 39
  • Probably would've been sound bending. Not too difficult to explain and relatively simple to show "sound waves" on screen. – Hakase Jul 29 '14 at 10:08
  • 1
    Flight is subskill per season 3. This is different from Avatar's flight method as avatars can never sever their earthly tether. – Quikstryke Dec 03 '14 at 20:36
  • @Quikstryke Is this expicitly described as a sub-skill? I've not seen it yet assuming you mean season 3 of korra. – kaine Dec 03 '14 at 21:19
5

Breathbending (or something of the sort; taking the air from someone's breath/lungs). As seen on The Legend of Korra, Season 3 Episode 10: Long Live the Queen

That Guy
  • 159
  • 3
1

Climate control? It’s already been said by Tenzin, that Airbenders can control their body temperature through breathing techniques, so i think that it’s feasible that they’d be able to manipulate/control the temperature of the air around them as well. Although, within reason. Like they’d theoretically be able to cool the air immediately around them to a certain degree in a warm climate, but not drastic changes such as making it cold near an active volcano. We’ve already seen benders do it. Earthbenders with lavabending. Waterbenders with icebending. Firebenders clearly can bend different temperatures of fire (as seen with Azula’s blue fire).

enter image description here

drggwll
  • 11
  • 1