Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-34874375-20180909075547/@comment-6036561-20180909095611

Regarding the "pure" element in itself, i think that Shinobi have much more room of usage than Benders.

As far as I remember, Benders cannot "shape" their element, but they can only control its movements. Let's take for example Water Release and Waterbending. Waterbenders can take water and move it to splash onto things, but the only way they can "shape" the water is making the wave thinner or bigger. Shinobi that can user Water Release, however, can take the water and make various form with it, and even create "temporary sentient being".

On the other hand, benders "win" this by manipulating the element's state of matter, while to do that Shinobi has to be lucky and being able to use an advances release. Again, taking water as an example, every Waterbender can use ice and steam, while among the Water Release Shinobi only the ones who has both Wind and Water (for Ice) affinity or Fire and Water (for Steam) affinity can do that,