Toph vs Azula

ANTHP2000 I just found your CaV on this match-up. So sorry I wasn't around for that. You would have had my vote easily. Though from my understandings CaV is more of a debate-thread than a, whole would actually win thread.

Azula like most firebenders are specially trained to deal with earthbenders. Toph isn't bringing anything Azula isn't trained to deal with. Azula is also an expert at zeroing in on weaknesses. Even without prep I wouldn't be surprised if Azula picked up on the fact that Toph relies on her feet to see and target them. She could also use her jet propulsion to blind side her. That's without the comet, with it this match is an overkill for Azula. I'm not addressing round two, just too complicated.

1. Azula

2. Toph

3. Azula

I'm going to side with Toph due to the favorable environment, I haven't watched the show in a while so it's very possible I'm wrong here, and I'm willing to hear a case.

Round 3 goes to Azula.

That being said

@anthp2000, I realize this was an older post, but I'm assuming your stance hasn't changed here, so I'd like to bring up a point of contention with your favoring of Azula, albeit by a minimal margin.

You cite Azula's track record against Aang though I'm not really sure why you think that would apply to a superior earth bender. It would be one thing if that showed a specific stylistic weakness earthbending has when facing fire bending, but if she's beating people because she's better, I'm not sure why that would apply to someone you have on par with Azula.

Additionally, in your cav, you cited Azula being able to put a hole trough Toph's wall. The problem is that Toph's wall wasn't specifically directed at Azula's attack. A more concentrated defense may well have stopped Azula's attack.

I'm not seeing what in Azula's track record indicates she'd gain an edge vs Toph.

@kbroskywalker: I didn't favor Azula here. I have litteraly 3 posts here calling this a 50/50 and with the comet it's a mismatch. And my stance hasn't changed on that at all.

As for the wall itself, Azula's lightning has more striking power than any single bending attack we've ever seen in Avatar by feats, suggesting that Toph can block it is baseless.

What's up for debate is wether or not Azula could actually get off charged lightning against her or how far away from the defence Toph had to be to not get struck.

@anthp2000: "Azula's lightning has more striking power than any single bending attack we've ever seen in Avatar by feats" what feats are you referring to? Azula's lightning was able to destroy small amount of earth and against Katara it barely scratched the floor, there are more powerful bending attacks, like combustion bending. Azula wins here because of her jet propulsion and great agility, she may use lightning to finish Toph but a good fire blast can do the job as well. closing the distance is also a valid option.

The sheer power behind Azula's charged lightning is insane. As far as I'm concerned, it can easily be argued that in terms of destructive potency, it's the strongest attack in the bending world (AS and amps aside).

When uncle Iroh redirected her lightning aimed at Zuko, it struck the nearby cliff and created an absolute massive rockslide. Now, what makes this so impressive is that large natural rock formations, like this cliff, are much more durable than any form of bending. This has been made quite clear whenever the characters go up against firebenders with scary destructive capablities such as Combustion Man, P'Li and Ozai under Sozin's Comet. To name a few cases,

• the Gaang hid behind cliffs whenever they encountered SSBM. He couldn't even scratch the cliffs themselves with his attacks as far as we can tell.

• Ozai couldn't overpower Aang's defences whenever he went up against these natural rock pillars up until he rsorted to lightning himself

• P'Li visibly damaged the small rock formations here with her more focused beams, but it's still not even close to what Azula's lightning did to that cliff

Basically, Azula accomplished what all of these people couldn't.

I don't believe Azula can take a majority here consistently. Jet Propulsion is limited and Toph's senses are incredible, including her smelling and hearing. I don't believe Toph can take a consistent majority either/ And I have current Azula = Toph >= Book 3 Azula

It doesn't make much sense that bending earth makes it weaker, the contrary may be true. The rockslide feat is not that impressive for three reasons: cliffs are naturally unstable and rocks naturally fall of them, we don't know he exact amount of damage done and the size of the rocks is not that impressive. In addition, this is a high end feat and Azula's lightning during Sozin's comet was weaker and did low amounts of damage.

@anthp2000: Consistent feats? You showed one feat in which Ozai's fire was blocked by a cliff, but it was blocked by Aang's Earthbending as well. You showed another feat in which P'li shoots pretty weak blast and they are blocked by some large rocks (not a cliff) and a third one in which CM fires a blast that isn't directed to the Cliffside and we do not how much damage it done to the ground. Even if all the feats were good three feats are not enough for this kind of statement which just doesn't makes sense, moving a rock doesn't make it weaker. In addition breaking a thin wall which wasn't even created to block the blast is just not a good feat.

@anthp2000 I meant the time he used the earth armor, but the sphere is fine too. Earthbenders don't create rocks, they move them, if they move a durable rock (that may have been taken from a "natural rock formation" though I don't know what scientific basis the "rocks get stronger over time" argument has) it stays durable. Cliffs get weaker over time due to erosion and destroying a small part of them isn't impressive.

The wall was a few centimeters thick which is nice but not exceptional and it was created to block their path, not to counter the lightning. Why does it matter that it was created by Toph? many Earthbenders can create a wall of this size.

CM has many feats beside the one you showed and Azula doesn't, even when she was boosted her attacks didn't do much damage. Here is an example you probably seen from CM:

Azula doesn't have anything this strong, and in terms of energy required there are many more benders who are much above her.

@anthp2000:

I'm aware you consider the fight virtually equal, but I noticed you said if you had to pick someone it would be Azuka due to her track record which I found a questionable claim.

As for the wall itself, Azula's lightning has more striking power than any single bending attack we've ever seen in Avatar by feats, suggesting that Toph can block it is baseless.

That may well be true, but that isn't really my point. My point was you can't specifically use Azula breaking trough a part of Toph's wall when the wall wasn't made to defend against that specific attack. The comparison you drew between Azula and Combustion Man is pretty impressive

What's up for debate is wether or not Azula could actually get off charged lightning against her or how far away from the defence Toph had to be to not get struck.

I see. A relevant question then, how exactly does Toph's pre-cog work? I've seen it billed like some nlf that allows her to avoid any attack.

What are it's limitations? What doesit actually allow Toph to do?

@anthp2000:

Did I? My bad then. I probably meant I favro Azula in a strictly IC fight.

Ah, fair. Doesn't the environment heavily favor Toph though?

While that's true Toph never defended against an attack that powerful either in the first place.

Fair enough

Toph's Seismic Sense is not precog, it's an advanced form of echolocation in combination with earthbending. Basically, it's a 360 deegree view that allows her to percieve almost like a normal person (she still can't percieve facial details and other stuff but you get it). What people mean by that is that because she relies on vibrations to "see", she is able to sense the slightest of motions on the ground, meaning insta-reaction.

That said, this doesn't really give her a speed advantage over other benders. Maybe a reaction speed advantage over some other high tiers but that's basically it.

Thanks.

@kbroskywalker: Imo, environment favors earthbenders and agile benders equally, so in a sense, I feel like it's neutral.

Could you specify how? I'm not seeing how being agile makes up for an environment where literally everything can be bended by your opponent(I'm assuming metal bending works with buildings, correct me if I'm mistaken).

Large pillars, buildings and walls or whatever allows Azula to do stuff like run on those walls, jump around much easier, gain height advantages etc. which is pretty troublesome, esspecially to someone like Toph.

@anthp2000: Can't toph bend those pillars/walls, or is that not part of earthbending?

Doesn't Toph need to touch metal in order to bend it?

That's by EoS where she was still new to it. She can bend from a distance in the comics, she held off huge amounts of metal from underground and she and her metalbending students can throw metal projectiles at high speeds.

And Kuvira and her daughters can metalbend from distance too.

She can, but how does that give her an advantage when Azula can use them to make the best of her mobility too?

@anthp2000: ...Isn't that first scan earthbending?

@unlimited1 said:

@anthp2000 I meant the time he used the earth armor, but the sphere is fine too. Earthbenders don't create rocks, they move them, if they move a durable rock (that may have been taken from a "natural rock formation" though I don't know what scientific basis the "rocks get stronger over time" argument has) it stays durable. Cliffs get weaker over time due to erosion and destroying a small part of them isn't impressive.

The wall was a few centimeters thick which is nice but not exceptional and it was created to block their path, not to counter the lightning. Why does it matter that it was created by Toph? many Earthbenders can create a wall of this size.

CM has many feats beside the one you showed and Azula doesn't, even when she was boosted her attacks didn't do much damage. Here is an example you probably seen from CM:

Azula doesn't have anything this strong, and in terms of energy required there are many more benders who are much above her.

The earth armor blocked some much weaker fire blasts momentarily. Anyway, Aang had to waste all his energy on that rock sphere and when Ozai used a concussive fire blast, he brought it down.

Earthbenders move rocks of course, but mostly out of the ground. Natural rock formations such as cliffs and walls that have been there for years are different. For example, Aang earth shield right afted he redirected Ozai's lightning got fodderized by a fire blast, but when he used the pillars to defend against lightning bolts (that are stronger than fire blasts), he managed to do it. As for the feat, again, Azula didn't just destroy a small part of it. The rockslide was enormous from a very good distance.

The wall was clearly thick:

Gallery

Other than Toph, only King Bumi can create a wall of this scale single-handedly with as much effort, and it's really not about scale, it's about the potency behind the wall. A random waterbender and Master Pakku raise an ice shield of the same size, which one will be stronger?

Toph knew Azula was a firebender, why would she hold back on power? Even putting that aside, once Toph blocks an attack that powerful, I'll give it to her. She has yet to, and this is not Azula's only nor most impressive feat, so the argument of Toph blocking her lightning is baseless. That's just consistency between power.

Okay... What has Katara done to suggest she can block Azula's lightning to begin with? I showed a valid comparison between CM and Azula, your points are circular here. I'm still waiting for your examples of her not doing much damage under Sozin's Comet.

And I'm not sure at all what you mean by "energy required".

No, she was bending the huge metalic mask of General Old Iron, which was burried between the underground level and the surface of the ground:

Gallery

And Katara even said it was Toph's metalbending alone that kept the mask from crushing them:

Gallery

And she was bending without looking at it which is pretty impressive precision.

@anthp2000: Katara blocked Azula's charged lightning during Sozin's comet and you are probably aware of that. The reason Aang's shield was blown away was that he was weakened by the lightning and unprepared, and Ozai didn't use a weaker fire blast on the earth armor, he clearly focused all his heat on it for several seconds. The blowing a wall feat isn't even that relevant here because its... wall level.

Blowing a part of a cliff which is naturally weak due to erosion is a good feat, but its not enough to put her on top of the verse alone.

An example of energy required sort of feat is Bumi pushing Ozai's statue, he didn't destroy anything, but the energy required to do that is high, in the beginning you mentioned "striking power" so I assumed you were referring to destruction feats only.

She didn't block it. The exact same thing that happened with CM happened there too. Her water got vaporized and the bolt stopped there, and that's partly because water conducts electricity.

Azula has plenty of stuff to suggest she is on top of the verse, not sure how you even question that. Point is that she did something CM and P'Li couldn't even come close to doing. CM didn't even scratch that cliff with his attacks, go ahead and explain that.

That's called raw power. And other than King Bumi and Aang, no other bender by feats, is as good/better than Azula there. She's precisely Katara/Toph level by the showings they all have against each other.

@anthp2000: I was talking about raw power, not general tier. And you are basing your argument only on a single unquantifiable feat, without responding to the fact Cliffside's are naturally weak.

"And other than King Bumi and Aang, no other bender by feats, is as good/better than Azula there" Korra is so much above her in raw power its not even funny, but maybe you were only talking about ATLA.

@anthp2000:

can you post scans showing how much mentaltoph was holding? I remember the feat, but I don't recall the specifics.

She can, but how does that give her an advantage when Azula can use them to make the best of her mobility too?

Because jumping around doesn't help so much when every place you jump from and to can be used to trap/take you out.

I'm basing my argument on many feats, inlcuding smashing a huge rock slide out of cliff, killing Aang on the spot, fodderizing defences from one of the most pwoerful benders we've seen and I'm sorry that those are the only times Azula has charged lightning, but I have to stop here.

I perfectly resonded to your "fact" twice. If it's so weak, how come Comnustion Man couldn't scratch it?

Actually, I was talking about both series, and no, Korra hasn't done anything to suggest she is just as strong as Azula potency-wise.

And I just realised that you're the same guy trolling me and fanboying Korra in 2 other threads.

Basically all of the metal you saw her students bending there. Those large iron boulders or whatever and this huge mask of General Old Iron's.

Aang couldn't pinpoint Azula jumping around because she was too "quick", and imagine that current Azula, who was effortlessly dancing around and beating up Mai, Ty Lee and Suki, is clearly faster combat and movement speed-wise. I'm not seeing Toph tagging her at all, even with environmental attacks. Such environment makes it easy to close the distance on Toph, who will lose in CQ. Of course there are ways for Toph to ultize the buildings to her advantage, but not any better than Azula can honestly.

@anthp2000:

Fair enough.

If Azula boasts superior speed and raw power, could you elaborate on what makes you think makes Toph an overall equal of her?

Eh, not superior power. Toph bends on a higher scale and has just as much force behind her attacks as Azula does with firebending. I don't believe Azula can get charged lightning off against Toph unless she goes for a 2 second+ move, which is her large building sized scale moves, but there are other options she has, mostly abusing the environment and her AoE defences in a small raidus around herself, which is a great combination because she can "see" through walls.

I could elaborate more, but I'd rather do it when time comes here on this blog entry.

@anthp2000:

Looking forward to it.

I don't think I've ever seen a respect thread with 15 characters on it though, I'd hate to know the word count.

There are universe respect threads where people post the title of a fictional verse and post stuff for every character, but that's mostly on not-very-popular universes.

Plus, it's not exactly a respect thread. More like, 15 respect posts with ranking and stuff.

@anthp2000: I am not trolling you, I disagree with you and calling someone a fanboy is pretty rude and doesn't advance the debate, you don't see me name-calling and saying you are an Azula fanboy.

Korra's wave against the colossus is leagues above destroying a wall or hurting a cliff. Azula didn't even kill Aang and CM didn't aim at the cliff side and the cliff wasn't near the sea so it suffered much less erosion. But we strayed off topic and I already stated my opinion about the fight Azula's mobility gives her the edge.

cool.

@anthp2000: "Katara bitchslapped a ship more than a thousand of feet away, which is more impressive than pushing the Collosus a few ft. back, and Azula vaporized her wave in the crystal catacombs. I would say you are f firmly incorrect."

moving a ship a certain amount of distance takes less energy than what burning the fuel required to move the ship that distance generates, which is a low amount. Evaporating a few cubic meters of water takes much less energy than freezing thousands of cubic meters of water.

Freezing water doesn't show raw power, moving the Colossus is raw power, and moving the Colossus is back is only arguably as good as Katara's feat let alone laughably superior.

@anthp2000: You missed the part of energy required, feats are measured with energy, not mass moved.

Explicitly wrong. Everyone measures the mass moved and the force with which the mass moved to rank bending feats, and they use the enrgy required as context, and that's just how it should be. Because think about it like that: Toph bends a 200 ft. tall, 100 ft. long and 50 ft. thick earth structure with difficulty. Then, her daughter Lin, bends the same wall with twice as much trouble (energy required). Whose feat is more impressive?

Clearly Toph's. Because Lin had twice as much trouble doing the same thing, despite her requiring twice as much energy. So in this hypothetical scenario for example, your way of measuring the feat is litteraly the opposite of the ideal one.

@anthp2000: I am not sure you understood what I said, the amount of ENERGY in joules or TNT is used to measure any feat, you seem to refer to the difficulty. If Toph and Lin do the same thing, the same amount of energy is required, but doing it with less difficulty gives Toph an unquantifiable edge.

@unlimited1: Absolutely no one Avatar debater I know of measures bending feats that way because it's vague and I'm not even sure why it helps. How are you supposed to know exactly the energy transferred to Iroh's fire blast?

You have no knowledge of how hard it will be for the bender to manipulate something and that's exactly because not a benders are equally skilled or powerful, so measuring them that way is circular and non credible.

On a side note, when you talk to me about "energy required" what do you expect me to understand lol

@anthp2000: When I said energy required I meant the amount of energy required to preform the feat, for example:

Katara freezes 2 cubic meter of Ice, to freeze water (in room temperature) you need to remove 418 Joules of energy per cubic centimeter so the feat takes 836,000,000 J or Room level.

Toph lifts Rocks weighing 1 ton a meter in the air, the potential energy of the rock is about 9,800 Joule or wall level.

Iroh destroys (by violent fragmentation) 50 cubic meters of cement, the energy required to preform the feat is about 3,450,000,000 J or building level.

Energy is the best way to compare these different feats and accurately quantify them, of course there are some inconsistencies between the fictional world to ours but they can be solved in many ways. Energy evaluation is the base of these kinds of comparisons.

@unlimited1: That's not remotely a good way to measure feats. We measure feats simply based on how powerful or how large the move is. Lifting rocks and freezing water is nowhere near as important as the force the attack holds or the plain mass of said elemental part.

The way you are trying to quantify them completely ignores that rocks from Toph and rocks from a random earthbender are not of the same quality. Furthermore, you're ignoring other things such as the quality of the hit object, even in your examples here, it's plain as day that you're wrong. The wall of Bang Sing Se is not made of cement, just like how not all metal in the Avatarverse is equally durable. Freezing water does not show sheer power. Lifting water and using it to attack does. Freezing water shows a higher percentage of control rather than power. In order to freeze water, you need to manipulate and lift it in the first place, and that's where the power of the waterbender is shown.

In my eyes, this is just a vague, misleading way to quantify plain and simple things.

@anthp2000: "We measure feats simply based on how powerful or how large the move is." so what is the measuring unit? Cubic meters? Hype per second? Cool points? And how do you compare completly different kinds of feats with this unique measuring system?

The cement was an example, not an attempt to Calculate the feat, I don't know why you even commented on it. To freeze something you need to remove energy from it, why do you consider one type of feat (lifting) superior to another (temperature change, which includes many firebending feats)? lifting one cubic centimeters of earth or freezing the same amount of water might show control, but doing the same thing with thousands of cubic meters shows power.

@unlimited1: The measuring unit is the force/durability behind the attack and the mass moved, that's just about it.

You just don't compare flash freezing to lifting buildings, you compare similar types of moves from different elements. Control and precision or raw power.

I commented on your cement statement to prove how faulty your way of measurement is, it ignores the quality of both the manipulated part and the targeted one completely.

I don't consider lifting water superior to freezing water. I consider then different types of feats which is why we can't compare them. Compare Katara throwing a tidal wave to Toph throwing a building, compare Katara flash freezing a lake to Toph turning a room's floor into quicksand but do not compare Katara throwing a tidal wave to Toph turning a room's floor into quicksand. Only way to compare these 2 completely different showings of mastery over the element is to compare the quality they posses in their respective category, either precision or power. But not directly to each other.

@anthp2000: "it ignores the quality of both the manipulated part and the targeted one completely." First of all, it doesn't ignore the targeted one at all, there are different energy values for different materials and different type of destruction. Second, I am not sure I understood your "manipulated part" argument, but if a bender throws a rock with enough force to shatter a wall, he gave the rock enough energy to preform the feat, the law of conservation of energy really helps us out here. In some verses (mainly the ones with magic) this can be more complicated, but the Avatar verse has mainly straightforward elemental manipulation.

I disagree with the notion that freezing is a precision feat, the ability to effect a large amount of material is raw power. By your logic, most of Akoji's (one piece) and Esdeth (Akame ga kill) feats are control feats, these include freezing an entire river and gigantic waves.

"The measuring unit is the force/durability" how do you measure them? you may measure force in newton's but durability and material strength are extremely complicated, and one of the measuring units of material strength uses energy.

Turning rock to sand is pulverization and the energy required to do it can be calculated just as well as the kinetic energy of the wave.

@unlimited1: Yes it most absolutely and clearly does ignore it, this is evident by your previous argument that Azula's lightning destroying Toph's earth wall is no different that destroying any other earthbender's earth wall. The quality of Toph's bending structures is superior to a random earthbender's, that's how benders overpower each other.

The manipulated part argument is similar to the targeted part argument. Quality difference. Zaheer throws an air blast and then Aang throws an air blast, both of the same size. Which one is more powerful? Per your calculations, they're equally powerful but obviously that's not the case. Aang is far more powerful than Zaheer.

The problem here is that you ignore quality and you measure quantity based on some weird energy factors.

I don't know anything about these anime, what I do think I know is the physics and the details on the bending world of Avatar.

Dude,I don't care about how many newtons Toph's rock has, what I do care about is that bender a has this feat and bender b has this better feat. If bender c has this feat that is better than bender b, he is automatically more powerful than bender a. That simple.

You may measure feats that way in other sites where you try to calculate and compare different anime universes or whatever but I don't care about that and I don't agree with this logic. What we are shown is clear.

Korra forced the Colossus back a few ft. Katara slapped a ship away a thousand ft. The Colossus weighs at least 7 times as much as the ship which evens things out a bit, but Katara's wave still arguably packed more force.

That's how I measure same-element feats and it's perfectly credible. Now, to measure the power between 2 different elements, there's easy and clear scaling. Azula vaporized Katara's wave with her fire = they're equally powerful. That is consistently proved by scaling between Azula, Zuko and Katara too, where all of them are equally powerful.

It's that easy.

Turning water into ice and turning earth into sand is precision. You change the shape and form of the element, you pull out certain molecules and manipulate them. That's obvious precision. It has nothing to do with moving buildings around and creating giant fireballs.