How useful would guns be in this world?

How useful would guns be in this world?
Nonbenders?

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Would be useful until they figure out how guns work

primitive guns wouldn't do anything
if they got modernized then benders become irrelevant in combat

> Nonbenders shoots gun.
>metal bender stops the bullet mid flight.
> metal bender redirects bullet back at non-bender.
> nonbender gets turned into Swiss.
cheese with a single bullet.

Benders start using guns.

>Firebenders ignite guns with their minds
>Make all the nonbenders shoot their faces off accidentally

They would start Gun Bending. Now the Avatar has to master all 5 elements.

Are any metal bender that fast ?

They would certainly be a threat, but any experienced bender would be able to defend themselves against them. Earthbenders are the most obvious, any metal weaponry used against them is effectively useless. I don't believe that they'd be able to bend a bullet in flight, but even just shaking the ground slightly would make them impossible to shoot. They have the most options to defend themselves.
Fighting a firebender while carrying gunpowder around is a death sentence, for obvious reasons, but more modern guns could reasonably put them down. Although at that point, I assume firebenders would have figured out how combustion bending works and that causes a whole lot of issues itself.
Airbenders and waterbenders would be the weakest against guns. Meme as much as you want about 'wind walls' and stuff like that, any gun, from any era, is going to tear through that instantly, and the airbenders usual MO of 'dodge everything' doesn't work against firearms either.
Waterbenders might be able to form ice walls, or bloodbend, but both of those are situational. The only real defense I can see waterbenders forming is healing themselves from the bullet wounds after getting shot.

I'll let someone else ponder on 'benders with guns.'

Earthebenders are all about defense so presumably yes.

They would be pretty useless against metal benders. There is something to be said for human reaction time, I think a metal bender would just break the gun rather than try and stop a bullet. If you did manage to get a shot off I think all but the most skilled benders would be pretty fucked. On a side note, I really liked how season 1 of LOK set up a conflict between benders and non-benders. I know the electric gauntlets kind of took on the role of a gun as an equalizer, but continuing that plotline with more non-bender weapons such as guns would have been infinitely more interesting than the crap they put out for the later seasons.

Would you say that a good waterbender could water-log a gun quickly if he wanted to? They could also make any gunpowder carried around wet.

They should have been Amon's final secret weapon for equality instead of mechs and planes.

No, even within the avatar universe no human is that fast. People underestimate how fast a bullet travels. 700 mph is considered slow for a bullet, most travel well over 1000 mph. Now, that is for an already fired bullet. As earthbenders are very defensive, so while they won't stop a bullet they can keep you from firing.

youtube.com/watch?v=yvSTuLIjRm8

Water is very effective at stopping bullets. Granted lower velocity bullets travel further in water, however, they still lose most of their power.

Good point, I hadn't considered that.
I feel the biggest problem with that is that bending is inherently slower than aiming and pulling a trigger. That's the real problem with nearly all 'benders vs guns.' Earthbenders have the advantage that their bending immediately stops the threat, and firebenders also bend the fastest, but the others don't have that advantage.

If the waterbender strikes first, then the gun is rendered useless, but they basically need the element of surprise to pull that off. If their attacker is ready for them, there's no way they can make the water travel to the gun before it shoots them.

Although, I will add, nearly all benders have a defense that activates after the first shot is fired. If the bullet misses, an earthbender has time to raise a stone wall. So does a waterbender with an ice wall, and airbenders can run away. And then the advantage is back in the benders court; because they have all the time in the world to bend and overwhelm their opponent, who at that point, can't aim at them anymore.

I understand, but my basic premise is that, if neither side has any preparation time, the waterbender can't muster a defense before the gunner fires, like Earth or Fire can.

Early guns would be useful as complement to benders, squadrons of non-benders shoot while benders try to make an opening
Once breech-loaders become commonplace benders start to take the backseat.
With indirect fire artillery and long-range optics benders are relegated to almost entirely non-combat work

Preparation time is minimal, we have seen waterbenders move massive amounts of water in a short amount of time, comparable to the time it could take to unholster and aim a weapon. Granted, there must be a nearby water source and the bender must be fairly good, but I think you are underestimating the power of water in this situation. You are, however, right that an airbender would be completely fucked.

I don't think that's how metal bending works

Sure, I'll concede that maybe I'm underestimating how quickly a waterbender can bend.

Well, that's assuming that bending wouldn't also develop with time.

We saw how metal and lava bending started becoming more common in Korra, also with air bending coming back after the spirit influx.

I think the avatar will always be strong enough to be relevant, even with modern guns,since we've seen the avatar being able to literally destroy navy fleets and separating a whole landmass into an island.

Also, bending could be used in subtler ways: Sabotage, interrogation, water bending healing for field medic, learning how to make water blades sharp enough to cut diamonds, etc.

Also, they barely scratched the surface on how much power you can harness through spirits, like the super mecha they made fueled by spirit vines.

you mean every bender besides earthbenders become irrelevant

>bending could be used in subtler ways

I think it would go the exact opposite direction. Guns would become king in one on one and mid-ranged combat. A bender, however, is basically a walking WMD. Why deal with some assholes with guns when one bender behind a rock could level an entire city block.

You cant make a water blade sharp enough to cut diamond. The determining factor is hardness, not sharpness. At its hardest state water is far weaker than diamond.

Metalbenders already are guns.

Wind can fuck the trajectory of bullets meaning airbenders can just make all of your shots miss.

>Granted, there must be a nearby water source
Katara could pull water out of the air's humidity, essentially creating water out of nothing. And she wasn't some special bloodline like Amon.

Layers and layers of compressed supercooled h20 molecules in a lattice?

if it comes down to the wire of lethal combat involving dangerous modern weapons, it's not gonna be out of the question that benders will turn to much more lethally precise uses of their bending, like if an experienced waterbender is willing to use bloodbending

Water jets at a high enough pressure are pretty potent user, but even better would be one with abrasive sand in it, which a water bender should be able to manipulate to stay in the water. That could actually get close to cutting diamond, not that you'd ever really need to.

Making guns that are lightweight, easy to operate, and combat viable requires steel working and technological development the likes of which only the fire nation has until the time of Korra at which point metal bending is common enough knowledge amongst military personnel it could potentially render most muzzle and breach loaded firearms useless. Also if they were to exist in atla and pre-atla times and nations other than fire developed them they would be low enough tech to be extremely useless against stuff like the firebending powered tanks, also hurling giant rocks is more effective that sitting there reloading yout fucking musket.

Are there any good examples of settings where technology grows to overtake magic?

Benders would still have serious tactical advantages in firefights.
>water benders focus on naval superiority with mist cover, and ice walls
>air benders focus on air superiority, firing down from high gliders
>earth benders focus on barriers and mobile trench warfare
>fire benders cry themselves to sleep in a world where non-benders are now just as strong as them

All this assumes that these benders are above average but not main-character tier. Advanced bending techniques change things a lot.

>water benders focus on bloodbending arteries in the brain to cause strokes with barely any force more accurately and faster than a bullet
>air benders unlock spiritual projection (I think it's airbending specific since Jinora was the only non-avatar/spirit that used this) which makes their reconnaissance skills par-none. Wars are won on information and spies that cannot be seen and that can fly through walls are invaluable and dangerous
>With seismic sense an earth bending elite team could just burrow underground and discreetly pull other combatants down to be captured/crushed/suffocated, and guns become totally outclassed (but even then metalbending could quickly disarm gun users)
>fire benders get back into the game (somewhat). Lightning is still basically useless but combustionbending's becomes a very powerful long-range explosive tool because of its range, speed, and precision which would certainly outclass non-benders with firearms.

Extremely useful. Benders would have no time to react.

Gun fires faster than an elaborate hand gesture. So yeah.

in such a world technology would probably be heavily influenced to accommodate use of magic and be more interconnected with it than separate

I think airbenders would be the best.
They can fly up and strike down.
They can kick up dust and blind the gunmen.
Also don't underestimate how much wind can change trajectory. 10mph wind can shift bullets ~5 inches to a 100 yr target. Airbenders can probably blow ~150mph. If they create a tornado around themselves the bullet might literally go around them.

I hate how LoK turns nonbenders into suckers. I'm rewatching AtLa for the first time and nonbenders are still pretty powerful enemies at least in the first season( Jet, the pirates, Yu Yan archers, Blue spirit, kyoshi warriors)

They would have to make the bullets out of wood to counteract the metal benders.

Or stone

Can earthbenders move stone?

No only earth.

As others have already said, bullets move faster than any hand gesture, so not even metalbending would be useful. Don't waste your time.

She was a prodigy like Azula and even Masters like Paku seemed surprised by how strong she was and how quickly she picked up new techniques. Until LOK, she was one of only two waterbenders in the whole world who knew bloodbending.

unless the avatar has round the clock guards like the POTUS has any fuck tard with a gun can kill the avatar whether up close with a hand gun or half a mile away with a rifle

Can benders stop colony drops?

The Avatar is a fire bender. The avatar (and any firebender) would be able to fuck up any gun in an instant. Also a properly trained Avatar is a metal-bender, so they could always take control Magneto style.

>Also a properly trained Avatar is a metal-bender

Korra is the only Avatar who has ever learned metalbending.

Yea but maybe only extremely skilled benders

if they can make platinum mechas, I don't see why not platinum bullets