Which trio of elemental powers would you prefer?

[Blue22]

#2

Earth is the perfect defense and I'm sure there are bunch of other practical uses I could get out of it. Water is just...a given. I'm a sucker for water powers. And air so I can fly.

[Twickster]

#2 is by the the most practically useful. Earth alone already ensures you'll be set for housing for life (ready made underground caverns and buildings everywhere to live in - bending prowess makes them secure and liveable) in addition to air and water - which would be necessary in life support as well. The other options are flashy, option 2 is practical.

[Postmania]

I think the first is pretty useful too.

Fire means free heating, free warmth in winter (pass a subdermal flame through your body and you're always warm), free cooking, easy firestarter in nature etc.

Most of us are probably not planning to be dwarves underground so you wouldn't really have reason to make caves underground, and any earth stuff above ground gets taxed or w/e bc it's easy to see

[Nschornhorst]

I personally go with #2. I think those would be quite useful in everyday.

[Rightoya]

#2 is by the the most practically useful. Earth alone already ensures you'll be set for housing for life (ready made underground caverns and buildings everywhere to live in - bending prowess makes them secure and liveable) in addition to air and water - which would be necessary in life support as well. The other options are flashy, option 2 is practical.

I feel like earth manipulating gets a bit overrated, and fire and lightning manipulation a bit underrated in the thread, at the level of building real modern houses or anything a modern human would want to live in become heat and energy not just very important but is the level of manipulation also high enough to have potent heat and energy sources with these 2 elements.

#2

Earth is the perfect defense and I'm sure there are bunch of other practical uses I could get out of it. Water is just...a given. I'm a sucker for water powers. And air so I can fly.

Perfect defense for what?

[The Watcher]

Earth, Air and Water for me. Air and Water together basically gives you weather control. Create rainstorms over forest fires, snuff out tornadoes, divert hurricanes. And Earth would let you prevent earthquakes. The three basically let you prevent (or cause) the vast majority of natural disasters.

[Twickster]

I feel like earth manipulating gets a bit overrated, and fire and lightning manipulation a bit underrated in the thread, at the level of building real modern houses or anything a modern human would want to live in become heat and energy not just very important but is the level of manipulation also high enough to have potent heat and energy sources with these 2 elements.

Not really. 80% of the cost of a modern structure are in the walls and foundations. I can very easily make a very fancy and comfortable shell of a high-rise (including very deep foundations and walls equivalent to poured concrete) using earth bending and have contractors come in later to install insulation, wiring, plumbing, etc. Can't afford all of that? No problem, tear it down and start again when you can. The same cannot be said for any of the other options. Even with using firebending for warmth, or electricity-bending the savings you get would be minimal (you can pay very cheaply for warmth and power) vs potentially the cost savings from construction.

You can do this over and over again. This doesn't even go into things like mining, finding deep water wells, oil and the like.

Basically, the practicality of earthbending is that its permanent. Whatever you make will be there, potentially forever if you build it well enough. All the other options (fire, air, etc) are transient. They stop existing the moment you stop applying them - necessitating that you *keep* performing them to be useful. The closest thing to the permanence of earth is waterbending, but even that is transient in comparison. Fortunately water is also included in Option 2.

[Sharpandpointies]

Really, I need to know more of what controlling these elements means in the context of this thread.

How powerful? What sort of manipulation is possible? How fine a degree of control? Range? Etc.

If it's just 'avatar-style blasting people', I don't really give craps for any of them except maybe air (flight).