What kind of bending in "Avatar" is the most powerful kind?

Is it water, earth, air or firebending? And why?

Fire or water, they both have secondary properties that the others do not. Like lightning, or ice, and blood bending.

That's like asking what martial art is the best. There is no best.

It all comes down to an individual's skill and experience.

Water-Bending. Water is the most powerful Force in Nature.

^Never heard of metal or lava bending^

Bloodbending is the most powerful kind of bending.

As an entire element, I think Air is.

Bump and blood bending easily makes water the most powerful in my opinion

Bloodbending can indeed be powerful but since it can only be used by a skilled waterbender under a full moon, that limits it quite a lot.

@magian: your forgetting about special benders like Amon who can bend blood with his mind and with no moon

@dmnb2wavy: I'm not forgetting them but since he and his family are the exception and not the norm, it is still the same.

Earth and Fire are clearly the most powerful in general

Overall, I think Fire is meant to be more powerful, but Earth is more versatile

Unlike what most people say, I feel earth is thee strongest element while air is the most versatile element. Fire and Water are inbetween and can vary from situation to situation

The best secondary bending element though is hands down blood bending

Bloodbending

Most "powerful"?

depends on which actions involve the most energy utilization per unit time.

I would assume that earth bending requires the most energy to accomplish (since earth is the most dense and most massive material), compare to the rest (air (gas), water (liquid), fire (hot gases and probably some plasma?))

"Fire" could be more powerful depending on how much heat content you are transfering.

"bloodbending" is probably the most directly and effectively lethal to blood bearing creatures but is pretty much useless for any other non-blood related purposes.

On average it would an air bender or fire bender I would think, they are less affected by conditions like an earth bender and water bender are.

(Lack of water or lack of earth)

Ignoring amons family blood bending has strict conditions so it would be simultaneously the weakest and most powerful among the secondary bending abilities.

In just raw power it should go: lightning bending, combustion bending, lava bending, metal bending, and then flight.

Lightning and Blood Bending are the most powerful.

Blood bending.

imo its between water and earth in terms of just what someone can achieve with raw power.

earth could be replaced with air though

u can make an argument for fire as well tho but overall in terms of raw power i'd say water takes the edge