Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-3568954-20140811184625/@comment-2172835-20140812215511

It sounds like everyone seems to be discounting other elements that need to taken into account with every nature type and technique. For one you have to consider that each technique have different levels of effectiveness i.e. rank, considering this it has been seen many times that a jutsu of lower rank but stronger nature may still lose to the weaker nature if that jutsu is stronger/a higher rank. The general rule as described by Kakashi was that an element will lose to its stronger nature if the technique is of the same power.

Now putting this into real life we can take many of the examples stated before such as water pressure and erosion vs varying solidity of earth in to the narutoverse context. If we consider that a weaker nature but stronger in strength can over power a stronger nature but weaker in strength we can understand that in every example that what we perceive to be the stronger element may be over powered. So it's very conceivable that earth is beaten by water when we think about river formation as well as the opposite.

I think the moral of the story is simple; nothing is as clear cut as we think, that is to say we should expect that general rules are just that and there are many varying factors which define the correct response for this question. Considering the complexity of many of the new techniques and their almost outlandish power it would be foolish to assume that standard rules still apply, completely.