Mako isn't the best firebender in the verse by any means, but he certainly wasn't a bad one. He's probably in the top 10 depending on if you count characters who lack feats, I'd rank him right below Zuko and Korra in this regard.
Raw Power
Mako by both feats and scaling has the raw power to match or surpass Ming Hua. This was continuously supported in their fights with one another.
Stalemates Ming Hua's attack with a kick.
Blasts back Lava from Ghazan and water attacks from Ming Hua. I'd also like to note he got took the AOE of a blast from P'Li before this, assuming Ming getting smacked by that boulder in the finale gets brought up.
Knocks back Ming Hua despite her blocking the attack.
Overwhelms Ming Hua, evaporating her arms by forcing her to block so much. To the point where she has to retreat for more water.
So yes, in their showings Mako was always able to match Ming Hua in raw power. However with Mako he's also consistent in doing this against other characters.
This feat is often overlooked since it happened so fast, but Mako used jets to enhance his speed and attack from the air. Allowing him to break a boulder Ghazan raised to defend himself. It's important to note Mako did this by himself. Bolin didn't aid him in the effort, and yes the first attack was a sneak attack. I'm only looking at the second one where he used jets. Here's proof for this in case anyone asks:
As you can see, Bolin didn't aid in this strike, it was all Mako.
Even early series Mako was able to stalemate Unalaq in power. A waterbender who's better than Ming Hua and arguably Korra.
He's also been able to break through Unalaq's ice shields, a waterbender who especially defensively completely outclasses Ming Hua.
Admittedly, compared to other firebenders in this verse, Mako's DC showings aren't very impressive, but I don't think he's a pushover at all in this regard.
Covers the width of a street with his fire.
Creates a large fireblast that knocks back the Triple Threat Triad. Important to note that this blast is much larger than a human. I won't be doing any pixel calcs to try and find out just how tall the blast is, but luckily Mako has an official height. He's 6'2.
Asami to the right is 6 feet tall
I'm not good with math, but I'll just assume it's somewhere between 15-20 ft tall based on Asami's height compared to it.
Mako creates a large wave of fire (and controls it) that covers a large distance, definitely more than just a street I'll say that.
Creates a nice sized explosion with a fireblast. The explosion was far taller than any of the surrounding buildings.
By feats, Mako isn't a weak firebender by any means. Sure he doesn't compare to the high tiers, but he still has some good feats of potency.
Skill & Versatility
For someone who didn't receive any training from a certified master, Mako is certainly a skilled firebender. Incorporating a lot of high level techniques the average firebender does not possess.
If we look back at Mako's fight against Ming Hua in the caverns. We can see him use fire jets to close the speed gap between the 2, and track Ming down forcing her to continue blocking his attacks. This is direct proof that Mako can use a high level technique to keep up with Ming.
Not to mention, the fire jets allowed him to attack while airborne, which was later reiterated by the Ghazan feat. Mako never displayed this technique in B1 or B2. A clear sign of improvement in skill as the series went on. His jets improved even more as Mako could use them to boost himself to the knee of Kuvira's mech in B4.
Beforehand, Mako needed a boost from Bolin to attack while airborne. His clear improvement is why I believe B1 and B2 anti-feats are moot here.
Another skill Mako has is the ability to curve his fireblasts while they're in mid-air. Allowing for more precision. Even in B1 he could do this, no average firebender has ever displayed this skill.
As you can see, he's able to curve his fireblasts for more precise aim at his target. This accuracy, plus the fact he's never failed to tag Ming's arms when trying, leads me to believe he can consistently tag Ming with blasts in this fight.
I'd like to also note this is a skill even EOS Zuko didn't have as far as I can remember.
Mako can also create fire daggers, which would enhance his CQC (I doubt he'd use it here, but it's still a pretty rare technique).
Hell, Mako's even been seen using a move only Zuko used in ATLA.
Another technique Mako displayed are defensive abilities with firebending. Firebending is almost a solely offensive element, but Mako isn't the average firebender.
This is another clear sign of improvement from the early books and his first fight against Ming, because before this fight Mako solely relied on agility or matching her with a blast as his defense against Ming Hua.
Overall, I strongly believe Mako has the firebending prowess to beat Ming Hua.
Lightning
Mako's use of lightning is the reason I believe he beats Ming Hua in this fight. His firebending can match and even overpower her, but his lightning is what will finish her off.
Raw Power
This is kind of hard to judge, because Mako's power in lightning seems directly correlated to how long he charges it, and lightning in ATLA doesn't really have any crazy busting feats above structures the size of a large building. However it is extremely dangerous (especially to Ming), as Azula was able to one-shot the Avatar in the AS with one precise lightning bolt.
Then we have the infamous Mako zapping Ming Hua to death feat.
Due to her disabilities, if Mako tags Ming Hua in the arm with a lightning bolt, it'll almost surely electrocute to death. She cannot block it like Katara did. As far as her chances of surviving a bolt, we do have feats of lightning killing characters on the spot in the verse, but what we don't have is characters surviving a direct hit from it. These are our best examples (from characters more durable than Ming Hua by feats).
No, Ozai did not directly take this lightning bolt.
As we can see, Zuko redirected the lightning back at the floor. Ozai tanked the explosion it caused, not the actual lightning bolt in itself. This same video also doesn't show any visible damage to the ground, which directly counters this feat from Mako being "unimpressive", because it didn't penetrate the ground beneath him. Unless you also think Ming Hua's drill feat is on a higher scale than Ozai's lightning.
The other one is Zuko vs Azula, which Zuko tanked a decent portion of lightning (and enough to take him out the fight and nearly kill him), but he still redirected a good deal of it.
The lightning that went to the sky is the lightning that Zuko redirected.
I think this is the closest evidence we have to lightning not being lethal upon hit.
Now this obviously wasn't as powerful as the other lightning shots. Either way though..
If Ming Hua gets hit with lightning she's either dead, KO'd, or injured to the point where Mako can end the fight, she's not taking lightning and quickly recovering to fight, no matter where it hits her. This was reiterated when Ozai was scared shitless at the thought of Aang redirecting his lightning in the finale. It's pretty much always been implied in the verse that getting hit with lightning is suicide.
As for Mako, his lightning does seem to have more power when he charges it based on his feat inside Kuvira's mech.
I don't think it matters though, no matter how fast he charges it, if Mako hits Ming Hua with a lightning bolt, the fight is over.
Draw Speed
The most important factor here, is that Mako unlike the royals in atla can create lightning instantly. His draw speed isn't limited by multiple motions. All he needs to do is point his fingertips, and lightning will generate.
Mako's gotten so good at this it became a direct tie into how he made money on the streets.
He can even do this while being bloodbent, that's how good he is at it.
I'd like to note Mako didn't completely resist Amon here, just enough to get off a bolt of lightning, he didn't have full control of himself like Katara did vs Hama.
And of course again, when Mako killed Ming Hua with a lightning bolt. Which I'd like to note, his draw speed was equally as impressive as him actually finishing the fight.
This is exactly when his lightning started to charge up, as you can see, his lightning proved to be faster on the draw than Ming Hua's attacks.This is the exact shot when the actual bolt landed.
The above shot is exactly why I believe Mako wins this fight. Let's break it down:
Mako's lightning has a faster draw speed than Ming Hua's attacks
Mako tagged 1 of her arms, which proves he has the precision to do so in combat
This also proves that if Ming gets zapped to the arm, she's dying regardless of how much water is around her
Mako's lightning > anything Ming Hua has to offer. Whether she has 2 arms, 6, or 9. It is the worst possible counter to her offense.
Note: Mako can also redirect lightning, not that it has any relevance here, but it's a sign to how skilled he actually is with lightning.
Physical Stats - Speed, Reaction Time, & Durability
So Mako's draw speed has been proven to be > Ming Hua's. So what about his movement, can he evade Ming Hua's offense if he's forced too?
Well I've already gotten jets out the way, he can use those to keep up with her speed, but he doesn't even need them to dodge her attacks. Even in the first fight where he lost (which I know is going to be brought up), he had the agility to dodge her attacks repeatedly.
Here we can clearly see Mako can dodge what Ming throws at him, he has never shown to not have the ability to evade Ming's offense.
Again we see him evade and even cut off part of Ming's arm in the effort. So that brings the question, why did Mako lose the first fight?
I will concede that Ming Hua got Mako the first time they faced, but what I will argue is that he wasn't stomped, and I will argue that Mako showed clear improvement from a combat standpoint from this fight and the last one, enough to the point where he'd now beat her on a regular basis.
Mako wasn't stomped, he successfully evaded all of her attacks, and even cut off part of her arm.
As you can see here, Ming combined 2 of her arms into one, implying she needed more power to win the fight than some people may think.
It's no more of a stomp than the finale atleast, Mako performed better in this one than Ming did in that one. Ming Hua overpowered Mako by combining 2 arms into one, she didn't stomp him, as Mako kept up with her for a good portion of the fight.
Mako has other feats of reaction speed that prove Ming isn't too fast for him. He's reacted to and bended explosions twice.
Ming Hua also hasn't blitzed anyone she actually fought besides the twins, but that actually lines up with the twins track record if you rewatch Book 2. They aren't as fast as people think.
Even on 9 tendrils and a spout to enhance her speed, Mako was able to evade all of Ming's attacks and land the killing shot.
There is nothing that suggests Ming Hua is too fast for Mako.
Durability
Not sure how much it'll matter here since I don't know how much Ming will even tag him, but Mako has some nice durability feats to his name.
Such as when Amon repeatedly slammed him into walls:
Or when Unalaq tagged him with a large and fast water blast:
It's important to note he was up and ready to fight shortly after ^.
Or when he took a hit from a spirit and got up quickly:
And of course we have the P'Li feat posted above. Mako and Ming Hua should at least be equals in durability.
Why Mako Beats Ming Hua
I actually think Mako's a bad matchup for Ming Hua. As I already stated lightning is instant death for her, and it's Mako's best trait. He can keep up with her best attribute (speed and agility). He's also in general just as if not faster on the draw even with his fire, which is bad for Ming because...
Ming Hua is a waterbender, but she's far from a traditional one, she lacks arguably the most important trait for a waterbender to have, and that's defense.
Waterbending's strength is its great versatility. Rather than supporting a separate set of offensive methods, waterbending employs defensive techniques that can be transformed into attacks and counters, defense into offense. Instead of simply deflecting an attack, waterbending's defensive maneuvers focus on control, achieved through turning an opponent's own strength against them, rather than directly harming the opponent.
Waterbending as an art is based on defense and counters, this is seen through most high end waterbenders in the verse. Just check out this one clip between Katara and Hama, two master waterbenders with an insane level of creativity:
What makes master waterbenders so dangerous is the fact that they've mastered this philosophy. Ming Hua due to her disabilities however, is almost solely an offensive fighter.
Ming Hua has only 2 real methods of defense, one is to just dodge attacks with her agility, the other is to block them with her tendrils. Both of which Mako has proven he can counter. Ming's fighting style is what makes her so dangerous against characters she can blitz, but it's also the exact reason why Mako (when he goes on the offensive), can overwhelm her so easily in their last fight. For Ming to beat Mako (or damn near any bender that is), she needs to be more powerful, or significantly faster. Here she's neither.
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Just watching this video, you can see Ming Hua has quite an impressive offensive arsenal, but she has little to no defenses against any bender with equal or superior raw power. The ONLY time where she redirected an attack at someone was when she did it against Kya's icicles. Which was an impressive versatility feat, but it's the only time we see her actually do something like this.
Mako's best skills directly counter Ming Hua's biggest weaknesses. This fight will come down to who has:
More power
Faster draw speed
More lethal forms of bending
All 3 of these Mako's proven to be equal-superior to Ming Hua. Therefore there's no reason he should lose.
A lot of counterarguments in favor of Ming have been that Mako won due to "plot" or circumstance. Which yes, he killed her with her biggest weakness, but the problem is that weakness is always there. There's also the fact Mako was overwhelming her so handily before she jumped in the lake. Nothing from the finale suggested Ming was on par with Mako. Also using your skillset to take advantage of your environment is an important advantage in a fight. Especially in this verse.
There's ways to make a character look stronger than another even if they have to lose due to the plot. Tenzin's performance vs The Red Lotus comes to mind. Azula's mental state against Zuko as well.
For my opening post, I really don't feel the need to go into depth about all of Ming Hua's feats. Instead, I'm going to focus on why Ming Hua would not only win, but stomp Mako in this fight.
Now, if the circumstances of this fight were similar to Mako and Ming's second fight, where he killed her, I would agree that Mako likely wins again. However, the circumstances of this fight are almost the same as their first fight, where Mako got stomped.
Mako does have more feats to draw from via Book Four and the comics, but he did not get more powerful or more skilled. His physicals did not improve. The same can obviously be said for Ming Hua, since she's been dead.
First off: Desna & Eska.
After regaining consciousness, Mako just staggers one of the twins with a surprise attack, and the other twin dodges his second attack.
Now let's see how Desna and Eska fared against Ming Hua:
They got stomped. And this was in an environment that is neutral to all of them since all 3 are waterbenders.
Now let's analyze Ming's fights against Mako...
Fight #1
Here is the first fight between Mako and Ming Hua:
While pursuing Korra/Asami on Naga, Ming blocks a fire blast by Mako.
She proceeds to block a second blast.
Ming attacks Mako with one of her water arms, but he dodges and counters with a fire blast, which Ming blocks.
Ming strikes a second time, and although we don't see Mako get tagged, we can tell by the way he rolls and grunts that it was VERY close.
Mako then deflects Ming's attack with a fire blast and jumps out of the way of her second attack.
Mako backflips off a wall to avoid another of Ming's attacks, and as he dissipates one of her arms with a fire attack, Ming grabs his hand while he is mid-attack and freezes it to the wall. She proceeds to slam him through a door, which KOs him.
She traps Bolin in a water bubble, and tells Ghazan to go get the Avatar, stating she has "these two under control". She lifts the unconscious Mako up with a partially-frozen water arm.
Throughout this entire fight, Mako was on the defensive. He was struggling to avoid her attacks, and although he was successful in doing so for the most part, not once was he able to tag her. This was Ming not even trying to kill Mako/Bolin, so she wasn't morals off. Furthermore, she was seen smiling during their fight, showing that this was pretty casual for her. As soon as she connected her water arm to Mako, he was one-shotted. Not once did he use lightning.
Fight #2
And here is the second and final fight between Mako and Ming Hua:
Shortly before their fight began, an AS Korra slammed a boulder into Ming Hua, causing her to bash into a wall and crater it:
She was momentarily downed but is shown to have recovered after about 20 seconds:
The fact that Ming was hit by a boulder from an AS Korra, slammed into a wall hard enough to crater it, and unconscious for around 20 seconds, makes it quite clear that she was not in perfect condition when fighting Mako. It's a testament to her durability that she was only momentarily KO'd from such a hit, but she was obviously not at 100% afterwards. No one would be after that.
As for the fight itself:
Mako launches two fire blasts at Ming, which she acrobatically dodges.
Ming blocks two more of Mako's attacks with her water arms, loses her footing, and falls into a hole.
Without water, Ming dodges another fire blast from Mako while jumping down further into the hole.
Ming, in her octopus form, assaults Mako with a barrage of attacks, which he dodges.
Mako then jumps between two pillars and fires lightning at the water, which is connected to Ming Hua via her water arms. Ming is electrocuted to death.
While Mako was on the offensive for the majority of this encounter, Ming was dodging/blocking all of his attacks with just her two water arms. Keep in mind that this was mere moments after Ming took a boulder to the body from an AS Korra and cratered the wall she was slammed into, being KO'd for a bit.
Also to note: Mako did have a chance to continue his attack on Ming when she had run out of water, but was hoping Ming would surrender. However, Ming also had a chance to attack Mako before revealing herself in the water cave. A morals off Mako likely would have attacked the defenceless Ming, but the same can be said for a morals off Ming not hesitating to attack Mako after he landed in the water cave.
The main differences between their first and second fights:
Location
Knowledge
Back-Up/Teammate
Condition/Health
What we have in this current battle is a scenario that is much more similar to their first fight due to the location being the same. The main differences between their first two encounters and this battle are that they are now morals off, can apply the experience from their second encounter, and they both start at full health, i.e. no previous injuries, rested, etc.
In their first fight, Ming Hua stomped Mako, while also clearly morals on and toying with him given how she was smiling. Mako was on the defensive and barely dodging/blocking Ming's attacks. He never tagged her either. But the one time Ming tagged Mako, it was a one-hit KO. Against Mako, Ming never used the pool of water.
In their second fight, Ming was on the defensive for the most part but still did not get tagged. She tripped into a hole while focused on Mako, and then got taken out via lightning conducting from the water to her arms. These are two environmental factors that played a role in Ming's defeat. It was a very smart move on Mako's part, but this battle does not have the same factors. Unless Ming decides to jump into the pool, or Mako knocks her in, there is no way she will be taken out the same way.
Fight #1 was the most fair/even encounter, resulting in Ming winning.
Fight #2 involved three circumstantial factors: Ming being injured shortly before, Ming tripping into a hole, and Mako utilizing lightning/water conduction to his advantage.
All three of these circumstantial factors do not apply to this battle.
So what's going to happen in this fight? Pretty much the exact same thing that happened in their first fight, but the fight ending even sooner considering Ming will be going for the kill and she knows Mako can use lightning. She would not make the same mistake she did in their second encounter.
Counters
Firebending
Stalemates Ming Hua's attack with a kick.
He blocked her attack. Ming blocked Mako's attacks several times in both of their fights.
Blasts back Lava from Ghazan and water attacks from Ming Hua. I'd also like to note he got took the AOE of a blast from P'Li before this, assuming Ming getting smacked by that boulder in the finale gets brought up.
With Bolin helping him, and while behind cover.
P'Li's attack didn't directly hit Mako and Bolin.
And during this fight, Ming Hua, Ghazan, and P'Li were repeatedly fending off attacks from all angles and while incredibly outnumbered.
Ming also took an indirect blast by P'Li, and she recovered very quickly:
Her first water arm was stopped by Mako, but didn't dissipate, and then she easily blocked his second attack.
Knocks back Ming Hua despite her blocking the attack.
This feat works more in Ming's favour than Mako's. Ming was mid-air, focused on Korra, and still managed to block Mako's surprise attack.
Overwhelms Ming Hua, evaporating her arms by forcing her to block so much. To the point where she has to retreat for more water.
Ming still had some water left on her arms, before falling into the hole.
This feat is often overlooked since it happened so fast, but Mako used jets to enhance his speed and attack from the air. Allowing him to break a boulder Ghazan raised to defend himself. It's important to note Mako did this by himself. Bolin didn't aid him in the effort, and yes the first attack was a sneak attack. I'm only looking at the second one where he used jets. Here's proof for this in case anyone asks:
Cool, but it's not like Mako uses this kind of technique consistently in combat, and his mobility is laughable when compared to Ming Hua's.
Even early series Mako was able to stalemate Unalaq in power. A waterbender who's better than Ming Hua and arguably Korra.
Pre-Fusion Unalaq was not a better waterbender than Ming or Korra.
He's also been able to break through Unalaq's ice shields, a waterbender who especially defensively completely outclasses Ming Hua.
Unalaq was not even focusing on Mako/Bolin when they broke through his quickly-made ice shields.
If we look back at Mako's fight against Ming Hua in the caverns. We can see him use fire jets to close the speed gap between the 2, and track Ming down forcing her to continue blocking his attacks. This is direct proof that Mako can use a high level technique to keep up with Ming.
How is this a high level technique? Practically every named firebender has used fire jets at one point.
As I mentioned before, Mako has used fire jets in combat like twice throughout the entire series, and both instances were done in this same episode. Can Mako use fire jets to close distances? Sure. Can he use fire jets while also blocking/evading attacks? No.
Not to mention, the fire jets allowed him to attack while airborne, which was later reiterated by the Ghazan feat. Mako never displayed this technique in B1 or B2. A clear sign of improvement in skill as the series went on. His jets improved even more as Mako could use them to boost himself to the knee of Kuvira's mech in B4.
And yet there is literally zero indication that Mako received additional training, nor are there any statements/implications that his firebending improved.
Beforehand, Mako needed a boost from Bolin to attack while airborne. His clear improvement is why I believe B1 and B2 anti-feats are moot here.
Moot to you because it works against you. You can't just disregard his "anti-feats" from B1 and B2 because you want to. There is no clear improvement, just the addition of more feats.
Another skill Mako has is the ability to curve his fireblasts while they're in mid-air. Allowing for more precision. Even in B1 he could do this, no average firebender has ever displayed this skill.
This is nothing compared to what Ming Hua can do with her water arms, who can phase change specific parts of her water arm, extend them at will, curve them any way she wants, etc.
As you can see, he's able to curve his fireblasts for more precise aim at his target. This accuracy, plus the fact he's never failed to tag Ming's arms when trying, leads me to believe he can consistently tag Ming with blasts in this fight.
And yet not once did he actually tag Ming Hua.
Hell, Mako's even been seen using a move only Zuko used in ATLA.
Which merely staggered Desna, and Eska proceeded to dodge Mako's blast.
Ming Hua's DC is far above Mako's, considering she has busted wood, concrete, and even metal. And this obviously:
Lightningbending
This is kind of hard to judge, because Mako's power in lightning seems directly correlated to how long he charges it, and lightning in ATLA doesn't really have any crazy busting feats above structures the size of a large building. However it is extremely dangerous (especially to Ming), as Azula was able to one-shot the Avatar in the AS with one precise lightning bolt.
Amon survived a direct, point-blank hit of lightning from Mako:
Lightning isn't consistently able to straight up kill people. In fact, more often than not, lightning does NOT kill opponents. Mako has never killed with lightning, and Amon survived it.
Due to her disabilities, if Mako tags Ming Hua in the arm with a lightning bolt, it'll almost surely electrocute to death. She cannot block it like Katara did. As far as her chances of surviving a bolt, we do have feats of lightning killing characters on the spot in the verse, but what we don't have is characters surviving a direct hit from it. These are our best examples (from characters more durable than Ming Hua by feats).
If Katara can block Azula's Comet-amped lightning with waves of water, then Ming Hua can likely block Mako's much weaker lightning as well. Not to mention that lightning has been dodged/reacted to plenty of times, by Katara, Amon, Aang, Zuko, and Iroh.
Throughout their two fights, not once did Mako try to use lightning directly against Ming Hua.
If Ming Hua gets hit with lightning she's either dead, KO'd, or injured to the point where Mako can end the fight, she's not taking lightning and quickly recovering to fight, no matter where it hits her. This was reiterated when Ozai was scared shitless at the thought of Aang redirecting his lightning in the finale. It's pretty much always been implied in the verse that getting hit with lightning is suicide.
IF Mako even uses lightning against her directly, which he never has before.
IF he tags her with it directly, which is unlikely.
Considering Amon could survive a point-blank lightning blast from Mako, it's clear that it won't kill Ming Hua.
You are equating Mako's lightning to the likes of Azula and Ozai, which is ridiculous considering he doesn't have the feats to be on their level at all.
The most important factor here, is that Mako unlike the royals in atla can create lightning instantly. His draw speed isn't limited by multiple motions. All he needs to do is point his fingertips, and lightning will generate.
Azula is also capable of instant lightning, and she's a more powerful lightning bender than Mako.
And of course again, when Mako killed Ming Hua with a lightning bolt. Which I'd like to note, his draw speed was equally as impressive as him actually finishing the fight.
Which he targeted at the water, which was connected to Ming Hua. He did not target her directly.
While lightning is certainly Mako's best chance at winning against Ming Hua, he lacks the consistency to do it, the accuracy to tag her directly (as he never did throughout their encounters), and the power to kill her with it.
Physicals
So Mako's draw speed has been proven to be > Ming Hua's. So what about his movement, can he evade Ming Hua's offense if he's forced too?
As if draw speed is the only factor lol. Look at their first fight, where Mako barely released his fire blast when Ming stopped his attack, grabbed his arm in ice, and froze it to the wall, all before he could react.
Ming Hua pretty much blitzed Desna and Eska, and held the upper hand in her fight against Kya. She also stomped Mako in their first fight, while not even fully serious and with morals on. Mako was on the defensive the entire time, and proceeded to get one-shotted.
She also consistently reacted to attacks from Mako, Bolin, and Kya. This includes a surprise attack from Mako while Ming was mid-leap and focused on Korra.
Her movement speed and attack speed are above Mako's by far.
Even in the first fight where he lost (which I know is going to be brought up), he had the agility to dodge her attacks repeatedly.
Mako was barely dodging her attacks and was struggling the entire time. Also, not once did he tag Ming Hua.
I will concede that Ming Hua got Mako the first time they faced, but what I will argue is that he wasn't stomped, and I will argue that Mako showed clear improvement from a combat standpoint from this fight and the last one, enough to the point where he'd now beat her on a regular basis.
This is pure headcanon. There is ZERO indication or evidence that Mako improved within the span of 4 episodes, all of which took place within a few days time.
As you can see here, Ming combined 2 of her arms into one, implying she needed more power to win the fight than some people may think.
More headcanon.
Ming Hua also hasn't blitzed anyone she actually fought besides the twins, but that actually lines up with the twins track record if you rewatch Book 2. They aren't as fast as people think.
Ming blitzed the twins, who were portrayed as roughly equal in terms of speed to Mako and Bolin. Not once did they even come close to blitzing the twins. We even saw one of them dodge Mako's fire blast.
Even on 9 tendrils and a spout to enhance her speed, Mako was able to evade all of Ming's attacks and land the killing shot.
While true, this was in a dark cavern, and it's not like Mako did this casually. We even hear/see him sigh in relief after electrocuting Ming Hua.
Misc.
I actually think Mako's a bad matchup for Ming Hua. As I already stated lightning is instant death for her, and it's Mako's best trait. He can keep up with her best attribute (speed and agility). He's also in general just as if not faster on the draw even with his fire, which is bad for Ming because...
Look at this:
Amon, with his back turned and after the lightning was fired by Mako, is able to dodge roll out of the way. And yet Mako is somehow going to directly tag Ming Hua in a fair 1v1 fight?
You say it's an instant death when Mako has 1) never killed anyone with his lightning, and 2) Amon survived his lighting. Not to mention the fact that Mako using lightning in combat is ridiculously inconsistent:
He used it while being bloodbent as a last ditch effort.
He used it to kill Ming Hua by electrocuting the water connecting to her arms.
He tried to use it against Amon, but it was easily dodged.
He used it on a motorcycle during a car chase.
He used it on a truck during a car chase.
Five times throughout all four books, and we see it being dodged, survived, and used via water conduction. If it was consistent, even with morals off, he would have used it against opponents A LOT more often.
Ming Hua is a waterbender, but she's far from a traditional one, she lacks arguably the most important trait for a waterbender to have, and that's defense.
Because she relies on her agility and the strength of her water arms to block attacks, which she did several times against Mako.
Ming Hua has only 2 real methods of defense, one is to just dodge attacks with her agility, the other is to block them with her tendrils. Both of which Mako has proven he can counter. Ming's fighting style is what makes her so dangerous against characters she can blitz, but it's also the exact reason why Mako (when he goes on the offensive), can overwhelm her so easily in their last fight. For Ming to beat Mako (or damn near any bender that is), she needs to be more powerful, or significantly faster. Here she's neither.
How did he counter these?
Agility? Mako was on the defensive and struggling to avoid Ming's attacks throughout their first fight.
Blocking them? Not once did Mako straight up dissipate her water with his blasts.
A lot of counterarguments in favor of Ming have been that Mako won due to "plot" or circumstance. Which yes, he killed her with her biggest weakness, but the problem is that weakness is always there. There's also the fact Mako was overwhelming her so handily before she jumped in the lake. Nothing from the finale suggested Ming was on par with Mako. Also using your skillset to take advantage of your environment is an important advantage in a fight. Especially in this verse.
He didn't kill her by shooting lighting at her water arms, he killed her by shooting lighting at the pool of water that she was connected to. That's a massive difference. Their first fight was much more even, and Ming Hua stomped him while being morals on and in perfect condition. Their second fight was much more circumstantial, and Ming had just been cratered into a wall and knocked out by a boulder from AS Korra. She also tripped into a hole, which is straight up PIS.
Conclusion
Ming is significantly more agile than Mako due to her water arms, and the location gives her a source of water to replenish her water arms or utilize her octopus form. Even if he does dissipate her water arm, she can quickly get more from the pool. The buildings allow for Ming to traverse the battlefield more efficiently, whether it be to close the gap or get to cover.
Even a direct lightning blast by Mako likely won't take Ming out, while any attack she uses against Mako will likely result in him being killed or incapacitated. She could replicate her previous method as well and just slam him into a door or building.
You obviously hold Mako in much higher regard than he objectively is, while also downplaying Ming Hua to an objectively lower degree than she is.
You claim that Mako has more raw power, when Ming has him solidly beat in DC, while also having the AP to overpower Kya and contend against Mako.
You claim that Mako's "faster draw speed" is a significant factor, when Ming Hua has Mako beat in attack speed, combat speed, and movement speed, while also having out-drawn Mako in their first fight.
You claim that Mako would definitely use lightning, definitely tag Ming Hua, and definitely kill her, when I have proven otherwise on all 3 counts.
All of this was without me even getting into all of Ming Hua's feats. Instead, I focused on analyzing their two fights as objectively as possible, while taking context into consideration.
There is a very good reason why the vast majority of people agree that Ming Hua would beat Mako, and I have solidified this with my arguments and counters. Mako isn't beating Ming Hua in this scenario, and I would go so far as to say that he would get stomped. I am confident the votes will reflect that as well.
After regaining consciousness, Mako just staggers one of the twins with a surprise attack, and the other twin dodges his second attack.
Well we can't just ignore context in this fight. Mako's firebending was weaker due to being in the South Pole. It's been stated and shown on screen many times that being in extreme cold weakens firebending.
Cold temperatures reduce or even completely negate a firebender's abilities. The Boiling Rock prison used insulated chambers, the coolers, and piped in cold air as a punishment for those prisoners who used firebending, as the freezers prevented them from bending. The same principle was used to detain P'Li in the depths of the icy tundra of the North Pole. However, skilled firebenders in control of breath of fire can use this technique to stay warm and keep using their firebending.
This plus the fact Zuko's firebending was noticeably smaller/weaker in the North Pole when he fought Katara, compared to previous encounters.
Now let's look at the size of B1 Zuko's attacks when not in the extreme cold.
Just for a direct comparison:
One is clearly larger than the other, especially in length
Firebending is canonically weaker in extreme cold, the verse is consistent with this, weakening Mako's attacks and giving Eska & Desna an advantage over him in this environment. This also makes Mako's feats of DC in the South Pole all the more impressive imo.
For what's it worth, the South Pole is also colder than the North Pole in real life. Meaning Mako was likely even more affected by the temperatures than Zuko was.
Which is supposed to be colder south or North Pole? The answer is that the South Pole is much colder than the North Pole. At the north pole, the annual average is minus 15 to minus 20 degrees, at the south pole it is even about 20 degrees colder. It is due to the different altitudes and the climatic environment at the North and South poles.
Now let's see how Desna and Eska fared against Ming Hua:
They got stomped. And this was in an environment that is neutral to all of them since all 3 are waterbenders.
I wouldn't compare dodging a basic fireblast to getting flash frozen. Ming Hua was much closer to the twins when she performed said technique, making it harder to evade, plus they just aren't really comparable techniques.
This actually lines up with the twins track record though, they've been overwhelmed by Tonraq (who's a lot slower than Ming Hua), in fair conditions.
The context is that Tonraq used this attack to get to Unalaq. Which the twins were trying to prevent him from doing, even visually these attacks weren't fast, yet the twins still couldn't handle it with their mobility. Tonraq by feats isn't fast either, Zaheer has proven to be way too fast for him to handle on more than one occasion. So while blitzing the twins is a nice feat, it's not enough to prove Ming Hua is a high level bender, if even Tonraq was too fast for them.
Now let's analyze Ming's fights against Mako...
Fight #1
Here is the first fight between Mako and Ming Hua:
Just letting you know the video doesn't work, not that it matters because I know what fight you're referencing, but just in case someone reading this doesn't.
While pursuing Korra/Asami on Naga, Ming blocks a fire blast by Mako.
She proceeds to block a second blast.
Ming attacks Mako with one of her water arms, but he dodges and counters with a fire blast, which Ming blocks.
Ming strikes a second time, and although we don't see Mako get tagged, we can tell by the way he rolls and grunts that it was VERY close.
Mako then deflects Ming's attack with a fire blast and jumps out of the way of her second attack.
Mako backflips off a wall to avoid another of Ming's attacks, and as he dissipates one of her arms with a fire attack, Ming grabs his hand while he is mid-attack and freezes it to the wall. She proceeds to slam him through a door, which KOs him.
She traps Bolin in a water bubble, and tells Ghazan to go get the Avatar, stating she has "these two under control". She lifts the unconscious Mako up with a partially-frozen water arm.
With her arms, this will be a big point.
^
So we both agree Mako can dodge Ming Hua's attacks with nothing more than his regular physicals? While also having the draw speed to counter?
I don't see why Ming Hua almost tagging Mako is relevant. He still dodged it.
So he can jump, roll, block, and do backflips to evade or defend himself against Ming's offense? This lines up with what I said before.
Indeed, I've already said in my first post Ming won fight 1 fair and square.
Don't see what this proves, other than a water bubble being a nice technique she can use if Mako goes in the pool for whatever reason.
Mako lost, but he wasn't stomped Round 1, that's what I was trying to prove. Which was reiterated when you acknowledged he was able to dodge, block, and counter her offense for a good deal of time. This isn't a stomp. Mako performed better here than Ming did in the finale.
Throughout this entire fight, Mako was on the defensive. He was struggling to avoid her attacks, and although he was successful in doing so for the most part, not once was he able to tag her.
Yes, and he adjusted his fighting style later on by fighting more on the offensive, while also incorporating more efficient defensive techniques. Which led to him performing better.
This was Ming not even trying to kill Mako/Bolin, so she wasn't morals off. Furthermore, she was seen smiling during their fight, showing that this was pretty casual for her. As soon as she connected her water arm to Mako, he was one-shotted. Not once did he use lightning.
Smiling doesn't mean it was casual, we've seen Azula smile when she had Aang beaten as well. She was smiling because she knew she had the fight won.
Unless you think Azula also "Stomped" Aang here.
She also did the same vs Zuko in the Southern Raiders despite stalemating him.
We've seen Ming Hua smile during fights more than once anyways.
Mako not using lightning can also be attributed to morals, or the fact he just wasn't as good and/or smart a fighter as he was later on.
Shortly before their fight began, an AS Korra slammed a boulder into Ming Hua, causing her to bash into a wall and crater it:
She was momentarily downed but is shown to have recovered after about 20 seconds:
The fact that Ming was hit by a boulder from an AS Korra, slammed into a wall hard enough to crater it, and unconscious for around 20 seconds, makes it quite clear that she was not in perfect condition when fighting Mako. It's a testament to her durability that she was only momentarily KO'd from such a hit, but she was obviously not at 100% afterwards. No one would be after that.
This is an impressive durability feat, but this is impossible to gauge how much it actually effected her. She still performed similar, her agility didn't seem hindered which is her best asset.
Also taking hits from an AS Korra and still being able to fight afterwards isn't really a crazy accomplishment.
Reverses a tackle from an AS Korra, Zaheer recovered extremely quickly despite the speed Korra in the AS has.
Gets slammed from an AS Korra from a considerable height, he wasn't even downed longer than Ming was.
Here we see Kuvira take 2 AS amped air blasts from Korra, after the first 1 she got right back up too, and won the fight after Korra collapsed.
Here's further reference to how much power an AS Amped air blast from Korra can have.
Even base Korra was able to stagger Kuvira's mech with airbending (yes I know there's further context to this feat).
Zaheer still kept going, and Kuvira was able to recover and win after Korra collapsed. Tanking hits from Korra in the AS is far from something we haven't seen.
As for the fight itself:
Mako launches two fire blasts at Ming, which she acrobatically dodges.
Ming blocks two more of Mako's attacks with her water arms, loses her footing, and falls into a hole.
Without water, Ming dodges another fire blast from Mako while jumping down further into the hole.
Ming, in her octopus form, assaults Mako with a barrage of attacks, which he dodges.
Mako then jumps between two pillars and fires lightning at the water, which is connected to Ming Hua via her water arms. Ming is electrocuted to death.
Which is a testament to how her agility wasn't hindered despite that boulder.
Blocked his attacks with absolutely 0 succession compared to the other times. Her arms quickly evaporated after 2 attacks, you can't just dismiss this.
Ok.
Which he dodges, this is an exceptional feat for Mako's reflexes.
Mako and Ming Hua fought, and Mako's the only one who walked out alive. That's pretty clear.
Ming blocked Mako's attacks, but Mako's potency evaporated her arms and left her in no condition to continue fighting. That's about as clear proof as you can get for Mako overwhelming her.
You also didn't mention the part where Mako used jets to track Ming down and continue his offense.
Or the fact his lightning was faster on the draw than Ming's striking.
If you look closely, you can actually see one of Ming's tendrils going towards Mako on the right.
While Mako was on the offensive for the majority of this encounter, Ming was dodging/blocking all of his attacks with just her two water arms. Keep in mind that this was mere moments after Ming took a boulder to the body from an AS Korra and cratered the wall she was slammed into, being KO'd for a bit.
Mako being on the offensive is a testament to how he's improved in his fighting style compared to R1. Ming was blocking his attacks with her arms.So while yes she took a boulder, we can't gauge how much that hindered her performance. Her mobility was just fine, the only clear difference is Mako easily overpowering her attempts at blocking. Plus the fight didn't happen right after Ming took that boulder, we've seen characters recover from AS Korra attacks with faster speed.
We cannot just use Ming getting hit by a boulder to dismiss Mako kicking her ass. Context matters, but we can't just ignore Mako's performance. I also doubt getting hit by a boulder would be enough for Ming to go from "stomping" Mako to getting stomped herself.
Also to note: Mako did have a chance to continue his attack on Ming when she had run out of water, but was hoping Ming would surrender.
I'm glad you acknowledged this.
However, Ming also had a chance to attack Mako before revealing herself in the water cave. A morals off Mako likely would have attacked the defenceless Ming, but the same can be said for a morals off Ming not hesitating to attack Mako after he landed in the water cave.
This is a fair point, though I don't think it's the exact same situation. Ming still continued her attack and clearly had every intent on murdering Mako. It is similar though.
The main differences between their first and second fights:
Location
Knowledge
Back-Up/Teammate
Condition/Health
Ming still had enough water to form 2 arms, which is her preferred fighting style.
Yes, Mako had more knowledge on Ming's fighting style and how to counter it, this is an advantage in a fight.
They were both 1 on 1. Bolin/Ghazan fought their own fights each time.
Already addressed, but sure I guess.
What we have in this current battle is a scenario that is much more similar to their first fight due to the location being the same. The main differences between their first two encounters and this battle are that they are now morals off, can apply the experience from their second encounter, and they both start at full health, i.e. no previous injuries, rested, etc.
Yup, which still gives Mako similar advantages.
He now knows landing lightning to an arm = instant death, especially if connected to a source (the pool). He wouldn't need to dodge her attacks if he can just shoot lightning faster than she can strike.
He knows he can draw lightning faster than she can attack him.
He knows he can use jets to keep up with her best asset, which is her mobility.
He now has the raw power to overwhelm her, opposed to the past.
He knows that fighting offensively gives him a better chance at winning rather than dodging and waiting for counters.
In their first fight, Ming Hua stomped Mako, while also clearly morals on and toying with him given how she was smiling. Mako was on the defensive and barely dodging/blocking Ming's attacks. He never tagged her either. But the one time Ming tagged Mako, it was a one-hit KO. Against Mako, Ming never used the pool of water.
She won mid diff, she didn't stomp him. Smiling doesn't = toying with him like I said, I already pointed out her winning took more effort than you think. Ming also started the fight with more than enough water to support her 2 arms, so she wouldn't need to use the pool water (plus physically going in the pool or putting her arm in it is suicide here).
I also don't think Ming grabbing and slamming Mako is a "one hit KO", it's certainly a lot different than if Ming just hit him with her arm, or threw some water at him.
In their second fight, Ming was on the defensive for the most part but still did not get tagged.
Well it depends what you mean by tagged, her arms are connected to her body so.
She tripped into a hole while focused on Mako, and then got taken out via lightning conducting from the water to her arms. These are two environmental factors that played a role in Ming's defeat.
Her tripping into a hole had nothing to do with how that fight was going down. Mako would've just evaporated the very little water she had connected to her. Lightning is killing or wounding her badly regardless of where it hits her, if it lands Mako can just barrage her before she recovers.
It was a very smart move on Mako's part, but this battle does not have the same factors. Unless Ming decides to jump into the pool, or Mako knocks her in, there is no way she will be taken out the same way.
Which if Mako evaporates her arms with the same succession as fight 2, there's a good chance Ming Hua will have to go near or in the pool to get more water. Plus if Mako tags her arms (or Ming isn't agile enough to dodge it), he's still winning. She doesn't need to be connected to a large water source to lose.
Fight #1 was the most fair/even encounter, resulting in Ming winning.
Both fights were fair.
Fight #2 involved three circumstantial factors: Ming being injured shortly before, Ming tripping into a hole, and Mako utilizing lightning/water conduction to his advantage.
All three of these circumstantial factors do not apply to this battle.
All of which has been addressed, plus lightning/water conduction is an advantage he always has here. It's Ming's biggest weakness.
So what's going to happen in this fight? Pretty much the exact same thing that happened in their first fight, but the fight ending even sooner considering Ming will be going for the kill and she knows Mako can use lightning. She would not make the same mistake she did in their second encounter.
So because Ming knows Mako can one-shot her with lightning, she will be forced to fight on the offensive? This directly correlates to what I said in the opener.
More power
Faster draw speed
More lethal forms of bending
These are the biggest advantages in a fight between 2 offensive centered opponents. Mako is superior in each one.
Frankly Mako doesn't even need lightning to beat Ming Hua with only 2 arms. It's just an added bonus. He only needs lightning to beat her octopus form.
Additional Counters
He blocked her attack. Ming blocked Mako's attacks several times in both of their fights.
Ok
With Bolin helping him, and while behind cover.
Ming had Ghazan, and being behind cover has nothing to do with the potency behind the attack. Also Bolin didn't aid him in the specific clip I showed.
This is only Mako and Ming.All Mako and Ghazan
Here are 2 up-close shots I took to reiterate this.
Well this doesn't dismiss it being an impressive durability feat. We've seen how much damage P'Li's attacks can cause even if there's cover.
Completely destroys Lin's earth shield. Which gave P'Li the opening to kill Lin on the spot, had Suyin not come in to save her.Sends Dai Li flying despite hitting the ground.
These attacks didn't directly hit anyone either yet look at how much damage it caused.
Destroys police carThis is how much AOE the shockwave effected.
We can see from the level of pushback how strong this blast was.
Mako was able to get back up quickly and continue fighting, which not only is an impressive resilience feat, it's a direct counter to Ming being smacked by that boulder significantly hindering her in the finale. I also never said Mako was more durable than Ming Hua.
And of course we have the P'Li feat posted above. Mako and Ming Hua should at least be equals in durability.
I still believe they should be equals in durability.
And during this fight, Ming Hua, Ghazan, and P'Li were repeatedly fending off attacks from all angles and while incredibly outnumbered.
From mostly fodder, fodder that P'Li and Zaheer mostly took care of by themselves. P'Li has proven she's above Lin and Suyin as a duo, and was in general the biggest threat on the battlefield at the time. So having her aid alone is a huge advantage. Plus Mako and Bolin did the same thing briefly vs the entire Red Lotus at once.
Most of that fight (the parts I showed) was Mako and Bolin vs Ming and Ghazan, while Lin and Suyin were coordinating dropping down to retrieve Korra. Oh and also most of the brothers' aid were the same fodder P'Li literally one shotted by herself on Laghima's Peak.
Ming also took an indirect blast by P'Li, and she recovered very quickly:
She took the shockwave from a considerably further distance than Mako did.
Sorry the shot is so blurry, but even you can see here the AOE was already pretty large, and it's not even near the RL yet.
This just makes Mako's durability feat here more impressive, and further shows just how absurd the AOE of a combustion blast really is.
Her first water arm was stopped by Mako, but didn't dissipate, and then she easily blocked his second attack.
Then they stalemated one more time before the fight was over.
This feat works more in Ming's favour than Mako's. Ming was mid-air, focused on Korra, and still managed to block Mako's surprise attack.
Ok, it still pushed her back some and she used her arms (again), but fair enough.
Ming still had some water left on her arms, before falling into the hole.
She had very little left, there was nothing she could've done with the water she had left on her arms.
This is how much water she had left on her arms before tripping.
Meanwhile, this is how much water she had before Mako's attacks. Which goes to show how much of her water Mako actually evaporated with his AP.
Cool, but it's not like Mako uses this kind of technique consistently in combat, and his mobility is laughable when compared to Ming Hua's.
He doesn't consistently use it because he started using it on the last episode of the second to last season. His mobility has proven to be good enough to keep pace with Ming Hua in a fight, with his jets being the biggest reason for this.
Pre-Fusion Unalaq was not a better waterbender than Ming or Korra.
Unalaq barely even had to move to stomp Tonraq, he did this quite literally effortlessly.
Now let's compare Ming's best fight (other than beating Mako once), which was vs Kya.
Not only was Ming vs Kya actually a good fight, Ming got directly tagged trying to go for the kill.
Plus Kya was shown on screen to evade her attacks consistently. She got tagged a few times, but she was able to quickly recover each time she did.
She blocked 2/3 of the icicles btw.
Unalaq stomped Tonraq with way less effort than Ming did against Kya, like laughably less effort. Now let's compare Tonraq and Kya's performances vs Zaheer.
Now the second clip Tonraq had some help from a chained Korra (he did most of the work though), and it's safe to say Tonraq doesn't compare to Zaheer, but I'd argue he performed better than Kya did. Especially against Zaheer's offense.
Zaheer blocked and dodged Kya's attacks without even trying to fight back, he was just trying to escape the temple. Zaheer then dodges and outpaces Kya twice to win without any trouble. Kya (like Tonraq), never tagged him and couldn't keep up with his speed. Pretty similar performances, that combined with the limited feats both Tonraq and Kya have, it's safe to assume they're on similar levels as benders. Unalaq stomped Tonraq, Ming high diffed Kya, pretty clear cut to me.
Another point that will be brought up later, we actually see Kya perform a technique I mentioned Ming use to beat Mako in R1, which is combining 2 water arms into 1 for more length and power.
Unalaq was not even focusing on Mako/Bolin when they broke through his quickly-made ice shields.
Unalaq's ice shields have straight up no sold attacks from Tonraq.
He also made this ice shield extremely quickly.
His pouch has been shown to be more resistant to fire than Ming's arms as well. There really isn't anything that suggests Ming's on Unalaq's level. Pre or post fusion.
How is this a high level technique? Practically every named firebender has used fire jets at one point.
Masters sure, I don't remember any average firebenders using it. I don't even remember EOS Zuko using it, only in the comics.
Mako's jets are pretty comparable in use to EOS Azula's (without the comet), during the Boiling Rock episode. So I wouldn't dismiss this as an average technique.
As I mentioned before, Mako has used fire jets in combat like twice throughout the entire series, and both instances were done in this same episode. Can Mako use fire jets to close distances? Sure. Can he use fire jets while also blocking/evading attacks? No.
If you count him throwing fire while using jets then sure he can. His strike against Ghazan could be used to block an attack from Ming just like how he used it to break Ghazan's boulder.
And yet there is literally zero indication that Mako received additional training, nor are there any statements/implications that his firebending improved.
The improvement is shown to you on screen. He needed boosts from Bolin to attack while in mid air in B2, he didn't in B3, and could attack from larger heights than just jumping and kicking.
The proof of him improving is simply him using techniques he didn't use before. I don't know why you need statements to prove this, especially when they clearly helped his performance.
Moot to you because it works against you. You can't just disregard his "anti-feats" from B1 and B2 because you want to. There is no clear improvement, just the addition of more feats.
They're moot because in B1 he was no more than a talented pro bender who lacked actual combat skill and experience. Pro-bending was extremely restrictive in terms of its rules, and he was clearly better in B2 than B1 so that comparison doesn't help. He improved with each season, which makes sense given he started fighting high level benders.
This is nothing compared to what Ming Hua can do with her water arms, who can phase change specific parts of her water arm, extend them at will, curve them any way she wants, etc.
Ming Hua is very creative, it doesn't take away from the techniques Mako's displayed. A lot of Ming's techniques with her arms are only useful in close range as well.
That being said, you've proven curving blasts isn't as special as I originally thought. Though it still helps accuracy, for obvious reasons.
And yet not once did he actually tag Ming Hua.
Depends what you mean by tag, Ming's water arms act as her actual arms. So if he evaporates them at will like he did in the finale, I don't see how that's any different.
Which merely staggered Desna, and Eska proceeded to dodge Mako's blast.
Ming Hua's DC is far above Mako's, considering she has busted wood, concrete, and even metal. And this obviously:
Busting wood isn't impressive, Katara did it with nothing more than her own sweat.
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Nor did Katara use a substantial amount of water to do so.
Busting chains isn't impressive either, Zuko can do the same thing without bending at all.
The metal door feat is the most impressive, but it doesn't change the fact Mako can evaporate her arms with his fire, in the end Mako's AP is good enough to win this fight
Ming busting metal is impressive, but it's not like she straight up busted the door from the middle of it. Nor is it comparable to the density of the metal bars Mako was trying to cut through while in prison.
Mako would've had to cut through every bar in the prison, so it's no wonder he just tried to convince Bolin he could metalbend.
The drill feat is impressive, but it was a specific move designed for a specific task. It's not really combat applicable either since we've never seen Ming Hua do something like that when actually fighting. Also if we look closely:
P'li was imprisoned in a glacier, rocks don't grow on ice, nor do we see Ming make contact with any rock while she drills through. When we see her falling, we can see there's no rocks above her and the surface is all ice. I don't find a waterbender drilling through ice to be a groundbreaking feat, most named waterbenders should be able to feasibly replicate this, and firebenders can and have melted and broken through ice surfaces before despite conditions being completely stacked against them:
Amon survived a direct, point-blank hit of lightning from Mako:
I already addressed this, Mako couldn't get the full force of his lightning because he was being bloodbent, the strain it took for him to raise his fingertips alone suggest this.
Also this still knocked Amon down long enough for Mako to do this.
So in total it was roughly 12 seconds until Amon came back into the fray, so I'd like to note a few things:
First is that Amon is absurd compared to most of the verse physically, and that Ming doesn't compare to him.
So Mako was able to hit Amon with a weakened lightning bolt, long enough to knock apart some debris and carry Korra for 12 total seconds before Amon got back into the fight. This is important because:
Ming Hua has nothing, and I mean nothing that could effect Mako like bloodbending would.
Ming isn't getting up as fast, and Mako theoretically had enough time to attack Amon after landing the lightning strike.
This proves Mako can also land a lightning shot in extremely close range, so if Ming grabs him or something, he can release a desperate lightning bolt and still win.
Let's say Mako lands a bolt that knocks Ming down like that, what's stopping him from barraging her with a flurry of blasts like this?
Lightning isn't consistently able to straight up kill people. In fact, more often than not, lightning does NOT kill opponents. Mako has never killed with lightning, and Amon survived it.
I already addressed why Zuko survived lightning, he redirected a good deal of it and also got healing from Katara later on. Plus Zuko was down and in no condition to fight which is just as conclusive as killing someone to me.
Zuko by feats is also 1 of the most durable characters in the entire verse, neither character here has the showings to suggest they have durability like he does. That being said, maybe a bolt to the chest won't outright kill Ming Hua, it'd still effectively end the fight though, giving Mako an opportunity to just barrage her while she's down. Either way he's winning.
If Katara can block Azula's Comet-amped lightning with waves of water, then Ming Hua can likely block Mako's much weaker lightning as well. Not to mention that lightning has been dodged/reacted to plenty of times, by Katara, Amon, Aang, Zuko, and Iroh.
Throughout their two fights, not once did Mako try to use lightning directly against Ming Hua.
You're suggesting Ming Hua can do something she's never done in any of her fights. She's never shown to make shields of water like Katara for defenses. Nor does she come anywhere close to Katara as a bender, especially in raw power.
This is something Ming Hua has never done. She's always relied on the strength of her arms to block attacks, which against lightning is suicide because her disability will let the lightning just conduct through the rest of her body if it lands, plus if Mako's regular fireblasts can overpower her arms, his lightning most definitely can.
There's also nothing that suggests Ming Hua can dodge lightning, and even if she can perceive it, she doesn't have any proper defense against it other than trying to dodge it. Due to Mako being able to generate lightning instantly, he can literally just spam lightning at her, and she has no choice but to keep dodging hoping to eventually find an opening or get close.
Aang and Amon dodging lightning are just absurd feats for their reflexes, Korra also scales due to her laser feat, but Ming Hua's/Ty Lee's? They're a maybe, but nothing's conclusive here. Plus Mako's lightning is faster on the draw than the lightning Aang evaded.
IF Mako even uses lightning against her directly, which he never has before.
IF he tags her with it directly, which is unlikely.
Considering Amon could survive a point-blank lightning blast from Mako, it's clear that it won't kill Ming Hua.
You are equating Mako's lightning to the likes of Azula and Ozai, which is ridiculous considering he doesn't have the feats to be on their level at all.
Amon >>> Ming Hua, just to make that clear.
I was trying to use their DC showings to show why Ming's "more impressive DC feats" compared to Mako's lightning are bogus.
Ming has nothing that scales in power to Ozai or EOS Azula's lightning, yet the only time Azula damaged the ground beneath her was during the comet, and even then it wasn't any larger than the crater Korra created vs Zaheer, and there were instances where even during the comet, her lightning didn't damage the ground beneath her.
This is the most damage we've seen lightning cause to the ground in either show.
Meanwhile in Ozai vs Zuko (without the comet), none of the ground beneath where the lightning hit was damaged. So clearly this level of DC is boosted significantly by the comet.
Ozai, who's lightning is more powerful than Azula's, caused no damage to the ground beneath him, only damage to a few surroundings.
Nor do I remember an instance where lightning damaged the ground below it while hitting a platform (which Mako's did). The reason this drill feat is being scaled too high is because it was a specific technique for a specific task, lightning has never damaged as much ground as it, but it's still far more lethal, and combat applicable.
If Mako's firebending is > Ming Hua's water arms, then his lightning is too, even if his firebending was = his lightning is superior, there isn't anything complicated or unfair about this.
Morals are off here so we can ignore Mako not using lightning due to morals. Plus he's been able to tag her arms plenty of times with his firebending, his lightning draw speed is superior to his firebending, and his accuracy isn't any worse so.
Azula is also capable of instant lightning, and she's a more powerful lightning bender than Mako.
Not EOS Azula. Though yes, her lightning is more powerful.
Which he targeted at the water, which was connected to Ming Hua. He did not target her directly.
While lightning is certainly Mako's best chance at winning against Ming Hua, he lacks the consistency to do it, the accuracy to tag her directly (as he never did throughout their encounters), and the power to kill her with it.
We can see it tag her tendril first, she even moved it back due to the shock from it, the remainder hit the water. Even if the actual bolt isn't conclusive enough for you, the light and sound is if you play it at .25 speed. Plus another 1 of her tendrils was connected to the lightning in the shot after this.
As if draw speed is the only factor lol. Look at their first fight, where Mako barely released his fire blast when Ming stopped his attack, grabbed his arm in ice, and froze it to the wall, all before he could react.
I didn't say draw speed was the only factor, but it's a huge advantage between 2 offensively focused combatants. Ming winning the first fight isn't an example of superior draw speed, Mako had to backflip, turn around, and try to release a fireblast before Ming Hua with an enlarged tendril attacked him. She overpowered him with a specific technique, big difference.
Mako's firebending matched her in speed every fight until the finale where he overwhelmed her. His lightning is proven to be faster, this is a huge advantage.
Ming Hua pretty much blitzed Desna and Eska, and held the upper hand in her fight against Kya.
She blitzed the twins, she's never blitzed Mako and has never shown the ability to. Her performance against Kya frankly wasn't impressive, considering she's supposed to be a "high level villain" she struggled far more than she was supposed to, and only had the fight won once she went octopus form.
She also stomped Mako in their first fight, while not even fully serious and with morals on. Mako was on the defensive the entire time, and proceeded to get one-shotted.
Her not being fully serious is just an assumption based off of her smiling. She was trying to get to Korra and needed to beat Mako as fast as possible to accomplish that. Mako lost, but he wasn't stomped. You can't say Mako was stomped in the first fight, then say Ming wasn't in the second.
She also consistently reacted to attacks from Mako, Bolin, and Kya. This includes a surprise attack from Mako while Ming was mid-leap and focused on Korra.
Her movement speed and attack speed are above Mako's by far.
Is this supposed to be impressive? I never denied her being able to react and block Mako's attacks. If her arms are getting evaporated it doesn't matter if she can react fast enough to block them, she doesn't have the power to block them, that's the point.
Ming does not have a faster draw speed than Mako, there is nothing that suggests this.
Mako was barely dodging her attacks and was struggling the entire time. Also, not once did he tag Ming Hua.
In the finale not once did Ming Hua tag him either. It doesn't matter how easily Mako evades them, the point is he can and can do it on a consistent basis.
This is pure headcanon. There is ZERO indication or evidence that Mako improved within the span of 4 episodes, all of which took place within a few days time.
No it's not. Mako showcasing techniques he never did before is enough evidence, plus the fact the power behind his blasts seemed to do more in his favor.
Plus it's not fair to suggest he didn't or couldn't improve, when we've seen plenty of characters improve vastly in skill with nothing more than experience. Whether it be Toph's sandbending, Aang's seismic sense, Bolin's lavabending, Zaheer's airbending, and plenty more.
More headcanon.
It's not headcanon. It's evident on screen.
Just look at the length of her arm here, plus we can actually see Ming Hua do this on screen, she did it as Mako was falling. This is the only water Mako evaporated with his counter.
We can see Ming Hua convert the rest of her water on screen. She won due to overpowering Mako with a technique he didn't know how to counter, not because she was faster.
If you want to argue she'd just win with the same technique, her arm is bigger so it'd be easier to tag with lightning, and this move is only applicable from a close distance.
Ming blitzed the twins, who were portrayed as roughly equal in terms of speed to Mako and Bolin. Not once did they even come close to blitzing the twins. We even saw one of them dodge Mako's fire blast.
This scaling doesn't work because we have plenty of fights between Ming Hua and Mako to gauge off of. None of which was Ming able to come close to blitzing Mako.
While true, this was in a dark cavern, and it's not like Mako did this casually. We even hear/see him sigh in relief after electrocuting Ming Hua.
The level of difficulty does not dismiss the fact he could accomplish this outstanding reflex and reaction speed feat. Being in a dark cavern makes it more impressive if anything.
Look at this:
Amon, with his back turned and after the lightning was fired by Mako, is able to dodge roll out of the way. And yet Mako is somehow going to directly tag Ming Hua in a fair 1v1 fight?
Which is just a feat for Amon, this isn't an anti-feat for Mako. Amon's already been proven to be absurd in reaction time, statements prove this as well, since Mako pretty much said he was impossible to beat because he was impossible to tag, a statement Korra never disagreed with for reference.
Amon is the only character shown dodging lightning while also closing distance during the fight, Ming Hua doesn't come close to him.
You say it's an instant death when Mako has 1) never killed anyone with his lightning, and 2) Amon survived his lighting. Not to mention the fact that Mako using lightning in combat is ridiculously inconsistent:
He used it while being bloodbent as a last ditch effort.
He used it to kill Ming Hua by electrocuting the water connecting to her arms.
He tried to use it against Amon, but it was easily dodged.
He used it on a motorcycle during a car chase.
He used it on a truck during a car chase.
Five times throughout all four books, and we see it being dodged, survived, and used via water conduction. If it was consistent, even with morals off, he would have used it against opponents A LOT more often.
Yeah he's used it during combat as a last resort due to morals, I don't see how this disregards him having it here. Him also using it on moving vehicles is a testament to his accuracy, since he has comparable feats with his firebending. It's also more than 5, I counted 7 times where he's used lightning, 8 if you count the mech. Like I said before too, Mako's lightning will atleast cause significant damage, which gives him the opening to win the fight.
I could also argue Ming Hua only used that specific technique to beat Mako in R1 once. They have these abilities, don't see why it's fair to dismiss them just because they don't use them in every fight.
Because she relies on her agility and the strength of her water arms to block attacks, which she did several times against Mako.
Indeed, which means vs a stronger opponent she's completely screwed. Also means she can't block lightning at all.
How did he counter these?
Agility? Mako was on the defensive and struggling to avoid Ming's attacks throughout their first fight.
Blocking them? Not once did Mako straight up dissipate her water with his blasts.
Mako's never been tagged by Ming Hua when evading her offense.
And:
Her water was basically completely gone after 2 blasts, pretty conclusive.
He didn't kill her by shooting lighting at her water arms, he killed her by shooting lighting at the pool of water that she was connected to. That's a massive difference. Their first fight was much more even, and Ming Hua stomped him while being morals on and in perfect condition. Their second fight was much more circumstantial, and Ming had just been cratered into a wall and knocked out by a boulder from AS Korra. She also tripped into a hole, which is straight up PIS.
All of this has been addressed.
Counters to Conclusion
Ming is significantly more agile than Mako due to her water arms, and the location gives her a source of water to replenish her water arms or utilize her octopus form. Even if he does dissipate her water arm, she can quickly get more from the pool. The buildings allow for Ming to traverse the battlefield more efficiently, whether it be to close the gap or get to cover.
Octopus form is suicide here. So is going in the pool, or even sticking her arm in it. Mako can traverse the entire battlefield efficiently as well with his jets, why the cave would be much different than this I don't know. Plus Ming was able to traverse the Air temple casually, and Mako had no struggle dealing with it.
Even a direct lightning blast by Mako likely won't take Ming out, while any attack she uses against Mako will likely result in him being killed or incapacitated. She could replicate her previous method as well and just slam him into a door or building.
Strongly disagree, Ming's only way of knocking Mako out is the way she used in R1, and her only way of killing him is stabbing, she failed to KO Kya with basic attacks multiple times, and failed to blitz her in her attempt at stabbing her. The same Kya who was downed by 2 attacks from Zaheer.
You obviously hold Mako in much higher regard than he objectively is, while also downplaying Ming Hua to an objectively lower degree than she is.
I don't see why you think this, I said Mako is below Zuko and Korra in firebending, and logically everyone better than those 2, I think that's completely fair.
Ming Hua doesn't really have anything showing she's on a higher degree than Mako.
Tenzin (a high tier objectively) stomped Zaheer, and held his own against 3/4 of the RL, tagging 2 of them.
Zaheer is clearly above Ming Hua, their performances against Kya prove this, not even mentioning Zaheer's other feats.
Ming Hua's most notable wins are against Mako (who she later lost to), Kya, and the twins. None of these are notable if we're trying to scale her to a high level.
They're both mid tiers. I think that's completely fair.
You claim that Mako has more raw power, when Ming has him solidly beat in DC, while also having the AP to overpower Kya and contend against Mako.
He does, and overpowering Kya isn't impressive, plus she almost lost before she went octopus mode.
You claim that Mako's "faster draw speed" is a significant factor, when Ming Hua has Mako beat in attack speed, combat speed, and movement speed, while also having out-drawn Mako in their first fight.
She didn't. It is a significant factor due to both fighting offensively rather than defensively.
You claim that Mako would definitely use lightning, definitely tag Ming Hua, and definitely kill her, when I have proven otherwise on all 3 counts.
You haven't.
All of this was without me even getting into all of Ming Hua's feats. Instead, I focused on analyzing their two fights as objectively as possible, while taking context into consideration.
There's no need because Ming doesn't have that many feats to begin with. Frankly I have no idea where Ming Hua being a high tier came from. Someone like Azula would destroy her.
There is a very good reason why the vast majority of people agree that Ming Hua would beat Mako, and I have solidified this with my arguments and counters. Mako isn't beating Ming Hua in this scenario, and I would go so far as to say that he would get stomped. I am confident the votes will reflect that as well.
Well I would hope that the voters don't vote based on their previous opinions on the fight. Plenty of people also favor Mako, so the majority isn't really a good case.
Let's overview.
Mako's lightning draw speed is superior to Ming Hua's striking speed, clear visual evidence proves this. This also adds to the fact Ming's disability means lightning is suicide if it hits her arms.
So what this means, from a starting distance of 10m especially, Mako's lightning is far too dangerous for Ming Hua to fight on the defensive. She simply lacks the proper defense to compete with lightning, her only hope is to simply dodge it. There's an issue with this however:
She can't dodge forever. This is a fight, and that means at some point she's going to have to attack him, which means 1 of 2 things.
She has to either be able to dodge lightning while getting close to Mako at the same time, a feat only Amon has accomplished on screen.
She has to have some form of long distance offense that can phase Mako.
Neither of the above applies here, even Aang couldn't dodge Ozai's lightning forever, he eventually had to redirect it when he got caught. I know Mako isn't Ozai or anywhere close, but neither is Ming to Aang. Plus this environment doesn't support the same amount of distance Aang and Ozai traveled, Mako's proven his jets can keep up with Ming Hua, so she can't just dodge forever. Ming can throw water at Mako, but he's already proven he can block that with shields.
It sucks for Ming because Mako can generate lightning with no more than moving his arm. It also sucks because his firebending has proven it's powerful enough to evaporate her arms, so he quite literally doesn't need lightning to beat her. If Ming is knocked down or tries to retreat to the pool, Mako can just charge up 2 lightning bolts with both hands and that's it. Fight over.
Going back to what I said in the opener, Mako has:
Superior draw speed, this was proven with evidence.
More lethal forms of bending, his lightning > anything Ming offers.
The mobility to keep up with Ming or track her down if she tries to traverse the battlefield, he isn't more mobile than Ming, but he's good enough and he's proven this.
The durability to tank majority of Ming's attacks, the only way she's really KOing him is with something similar to fight 1, which he now knows the technique and to keep his distance as much as possible.
He also has more raw power with his firebending alone, Octopus Ming can't beat him due to lightning, and just 2 arms simply isn't enough.
Still don't see why Mako loses, he has the more important advantages where it matters.
@kataraaaa: Hey, just letting you know that I'm going to be very inactive on CV for some time due to personal reasons. I'm not abandoning though, so once I'm back, I will let you know and we can continue.
@geekryan: bump, it’s been a while and I think it’s best for an update now, not trying to rush your next post, but I’m not trying to abandon/forget about the thread.
Since your 2nd post is quite lengthy and detailed, I'm going to try and keep my next post short. Hopefully our 3rd posts can be more concise as well. We don't want to bore readers with massive posts lol.
@geekryan: glad to hear that! may the best man win 🤝
I can’t promise anything about the length of the post because thats just how shit goes down sometimes I guess, but I’ll try to make my finisher less cluttered and as neat and precise as possible to minimize the volume.. the organization of that one wasn’t the best
I also feel like a dumbass since I spent like 3-4 hours making that post all in 1 go and like 1-2 more editing and proofreading it, that was probably not a good idea
@geekryan: glad to hear, ngl I kinda just wanna get this over with but my opinion hasn’t changed in the past few months so I’ll be waiting
Same, which is why I'm pushing through even though I'm not motivated anymore. Would you want to do 2 posts each instead of 3? You can edit your 2nd post accordingly before I post.
@geekryan: I think 3 is better as I’m sure there’s more to cover - it wouldn’t be hard for me to put up a 3rd post and there isn’t much editing for me to do on the 2nd, I’d rather push through it but I wouldn’t rush you or anything on the closer.
EDIT: I’ll make the 3rd post less overwhelming and more precise though, as my formatting on the 2nd is pretty shitty lmao
I have decided to do my second post a bit differently than I usually do. Instead of just countering my opponent's arguments, I am going to reintroduce Ming Hua and go into depth about her feats. I am also going to discuss Mako and explain why he is being overhyped by my opponent.
I will end my post by countering some of my opponent's arguments, the ones I feel are most important to address. Not everything my opponent has argued will be mentioned. But if an argument made by my opponent is not addressed by me, it does not mean I am conceding to the argument. It just means I don't think it is important enough to bring up, either because I have addressed it already, it's repetition, or I don't deem it as a significant factor in this debate.
Why Ming Hua = GOAT
When discussing the bending/combat ability of characters, a lot of factors come into play. Skill, experience, power, win/loss ratios, physicals, weaknesses, versatility, feats of clearing fodder, fights against named and reputable characters, etc. Although I will touch upon most of these factors, the ones I will be focusing on the most are her fights against named characters and fodder, in order to demonstrate why she is superior to Mako.
It's obvious to say that Mako has significantly more feats than Ming Hua. Mako is one of the main characters and has appeared in all four books of LOK. Ming Hua was one of the main villains in Book 3 but only appeared in 9 episodes. However, despite Ming having less feats than Mako, the ones she does have are still more impressive than what Mako has ever shown.
Fodder
We only see Ming Hua fighting fodder on 3 occasions:
White Lotus guards during her prison break (0:00-0:45)
White Lotus guards when freeing P'Li (1:20-1:27)
Against the Dai Li in the Earth Queen's throne room (8:05-8:21)
1) After being imprisoned for 13 years, and while only using her water arms, Ming Hua took down 5 White Lotus guards. She one-shotted each of them, didn't seem to struggle, and was never tagged. She was shown dodging and weaving around multiple fire blasts as well as a boulder, while only touching the ground twice due to her taking advantage of her bending mobility.
2) While this only involved 2 White Lotus guards, she took one out while free falling and then easily flash-froze the other one. Very brief and simple, but still something to note.
Meanwhile, it took the Red Lotus about 15 seconds to take down a group of around 10 of them, while completely surrounded. We see Ming Hua flash-freeze a flying Dai Li agent into a pillar. Keep in mind that she only had her water arms here.
Mako has plenty of feats of him beating fodder, but nothing comparable to Ming taking down the 5 White Lotus Guards or her and the Red Lotus dealing with a large group of Dai Li Agents.
Named Opponents
Ming Hua has had fights against 4 named opponents:
Desna & Eska (0:57-1:15)
Mako (6:30-7:14)
Kya (8:22-9:20)
Mako again (9:21-10:09)
*Times are for the clip I posted above*
1) Desna & Eska are master waterbenders who have given trouble to Korra and Mako/Bolin. In this fight, the twins launch a barrage of ice projectiles at Ming Hua, which she easily dodges. They then release a massive amount of ice spikes from the ground, which Ming Hua navigates across via her water arms. As she lands, the twins launch an ice pillar beneath her, which she bounces off from. As the twins backflip away, Ming simultaneously flash-freezes them in ice pillars.
I do want to emphasize that the twins were able to pressure Korra, although she was more focused on escape rather than fighting them. They are master waterbenders, and Ming Hua fodderized them.
2) *Copy>pasting the summary of the fight from my last post*
While pursuing Korra/Asami on Naga, Ming blocks a fire blast by Mako.
She proceeds to block a second blast.
Ming attacks Mako with one of her water arms, but he dodges and counters with a fire blast, which Ming blocks.
Ming strikes a second time, and although Mako was not tagged, we can tell by the way he rolls and grunts that it was VERY close.
Mako then deflects Ming's attack with a fire blast and jumps out of the way of her second attack.
Mako backflips off a wall to avoid another of Ming's attacks, and as he dissipates one of her arms with a fire attack, Ming grabs his hand while he is mid-attack and freezes it to the wall. She proceeds to slam him through a door, which KOs him.
She traps Bolin in a water bubble, and tells Ghazan to go get the Avatar, stating she has "these two under control". She lifts the unconscious Mako up with a partially-frozen water arm.
Throughout this entire fight, Mako was on the defensive. He was struggling to avoid her attacks, and although he was successful in doing so for the most part, not once was he able to tag her. This was Ming not even trying to kill Mako/Bolin, so she wasn't morals off. Furthermore, she was seen smiling during their fight, showing that this was pretty casual for her. As soon as she connected her water arm to Mako, he was one-shotted. Not once did he use lightning.
3) As the fight starts, we see Ming Hua overpowering Kya with a stream of water. She then leaps and smashes the ground with her water arm, which Kya barely avoided. Ming then turns the ends of her water arms into ice blades and proceeds to spin around with them, slicing through a concrete statue and forcing Kya to dodge. Kya takes hold of the tip of Ming's ice blade, rips it off, and sends it spiralling back at Ming. Ming grabs it and launches it right back along with two other projectiles, and while Kya blocks the first two, she gets hit and injured by the third one. As Ming uses a water slide to charge at Kya with an ice spear to land the killing blow, Kya uses the remaining water from the fountain to blast Ming off the temple's edge. Ming quickly recovers, collecting the water to enter an octopus form. Ming blasts Kya through the tunnel and chases her around the area while bombarding her with her water arms; Kya barely dodges the first two strikes and gets slapped by the third strike. She's fine but visibly injured.
Now I already know that you're going to downplay this fight by saying that Kya is fodder. However, Ming Hua held the upper hand throughout the entire fight. This doesn't work against Ming Hua, it works in favour of Kya, due to her limited fights. Kya's only other real fight was against Zaheer, and though she lost, she hold her own for around a minute. Kya was a master waterbender, trained by Katara, and was primarily a healer with limited combat experience.
4) *Copy>pasting the summary of the fight from my last post but with a few edits*
Shortly before their fight began, an AS Korra slammed a boulder into Ming Hua, causing her to bash into a wall and crater it:
She was injured but not KO'dand was shown to have recovered after about 20 seconds:
The fact that Ming was hit by a boulder from an AS Korra, slammed into a wall hard enough to crater it, and downed for about 20 seconds makes it quite clear that she was not in perfect condition when fighting Mako. It's a testament to her durability that she was only momentarily downed from such a hit, but she was obviously not at 100% afterwards. No one would be after that.
As for the fight itself:
Mako launches two fire blasts at Ming, which she acrobatically dodges.
Ming blocks two more of Mako's attacks with her water arms, loses her footing, and falls into a hole.
Without water, Ming dodges another fire blast from Mako while jumping down further into the hole.
Ming, in her octopus form, assaults Mako with a barrage of attacks, which he dodges.
Mako then jumps between two pillars and fires lightning at the water, which is connected to Ming Hua via her water arms. Ming is electrocuted to death.
While Mako was on the offensive for the majority of this encounter, Ming was dodging/blocking all of his attacks with just her two water arms. Keep in mind that this was mere moments after Ming took a boulder to the body from an AS Korra and cratered the wall she was slammed into, being downed for a bit.
Overall, she won 3 out of these 4 fights, and her only loss was her second fight against Mako, which he won due to taking advantage of the environment. That would not be replicable in this fight.
Misc.
In terms of raw power, versatility, skill, and mobility, Ming Hua holds a distinct advantage over Mako.
Versatility: Waterbending is generally considered to be a more versatile element than firebending. Ming is no exception to this, as she has used a variety of techniques, such as water arms, ice hooks, water spheres, water blasts, ice spikes, water slides, water spouts, octopus form, phase changing, flash freezing, ice spears, and more. This gives Ming Hua a ton of more options to use in combat against Mako, who normally resorts to basic fire blasts/streams.
Skill: Despite having a massive physical handicap of not having any arms, Ming does very well for herself. She makes up for her lack of arms by maintaining water arms, which she can use to grab things, drive, form tools/objects, and even multi-task with several water arms at once. Ming's most impressive display of skill is when she made it seem like there were around 20 hooded and captive airbenders, when it was just her projecting water in the shape of humans in their clothing. She even dropped the act in a gradual way rather than all at once, showing she had individual control over each decoy. The amount of skill and precision required to do this is insane, and Mako has nothing close to this level. Furthermore, due to her lack of arms, Ming is capable of psychic bending, i.e. bending with little to no movement, especially in the arms. This gives Ming a slight advantage in that she does not need to execute full range of motion in order to perform an attack, and it can make her attacks less telegraphed since there is little arm movement involved.
Mobility: Another advantage Ming has over Mako is mobility. She consistently uses her water arms to swing around the battlefield, elevate herself from the ground, or grab/pull herself to distant areas:
Mako, on the other hand, sometimes uses fire jets? And I can only think of 2-3 instances where he used them in combat.
Why Mako ≠ GOAT
I will admit that Mako is often lowballed and downplayed. He isn't as bad as most people believe he is. However, a lot of these negative opinions about him aren't without merit.
1) While Unalaq was fighting Korra, Mako fails to land a fire blast on Unalaq and proceeds to get smacked in the face with a water whip and floored. This is Pre-Fusion Unalaq with only a skin of water.
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2) Although they put up a good fight, Mako and Bolin got overwhelmed by Pre-Fusion Unalaq in a 2v1. Mako got taken out first via water blast. (0:22)
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3) While defending the spirit portal, Mako and Bolin got snuck up on by Desna and Eska. Mako failed to react to Desna's attack, although he did only see him at the last second. Bolin and Mako proceed edto get one-shot by Pre-Fusion Unalaq's water blast. (0:54)
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4) While being dragged, Mako and Bolin try to take Desna and Eska by surprise, but Desna pretty much ignores Mako's fire blast, and Eska dodges his next attack. (1:22)
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5) Mako launches 3 consecutive fire blasts, which combine into one, and Ming Hua blocks it with one water arm. (2:49)
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6) Not a feat per say, but Mako says "Bolin and I will hold them off.", which implies he knows they can't beat Ming Hua and Ghazan. (6:21)
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7) Despite having no reason to suspect an attack, Zaheer easily avoids Mako's point blank fire blast and then floors Mako and Bolin with a counterattack:
8) It takes Mako about 30 seconds to beat a fodder metalbender 1v1, and he struggles throughout the fight. (0:13)
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I'm already anticipating your counters of "Oh that's PIS" or "Oh those are anti-feats". You might notice that I purposely excluded any feats of Mako from Book 1. Why? Because now you can't use the excuse of Mako not being as skilled/experienced as he is in the subsequent seasons. If I included Book 1, I could have easily added another like 5 examples to this list of Mako not being as great as you make him out to be. Mako does have some good feats, but he also has a lot of bad ones, as I proved here.
Counters
As I mentioned earlier, I will only be addressing what I believe are the most important/relevant arguments that my opponent brought up.
So we both agree Mako can dodge Ming Hua's attacks with nothing more than his regular physicals? While also having the draw speed to counter?
To an extent, but through this entire fight, Mako was pressured and on the defensive. Not once did he tag Ming Hua, and he got tagged/one-shotted once and very nearly tagged before that.
I don't see why Ming Hua almost tagging Mako is relevant. He still dodged it.
Because he isn't going to be able to dodge everything and will eventually get tagged. And that was Ming not taking the fight very seriously given she was literally smirking/smiling throughout.
So he can jump, roll, block, and do backflips to evade or defend himself against Ming's offense? This lines up with what I said before.
You're trying to make it seem like Mako was doing well in this fight, but he wasn't. No rational/unbiased person will watch the fight and say that Mako was NOT overwhelmed the entire time. His grunts are a huge indicator of that, plus the fact that he was running away from Ming the entire time and struggling to avoid her attacks.
Mako lost, but he wasn't stomped Round 1, that's what I was trying to prove. Which was reiterated when you acknowledged he was able to dodge, block, and counter her offense for a good deal of time. This isn't a stomp. Mako performed better here than Ming did in the finale.
This was pretty much a stomp. Mako was barely avoiding Ming's attacks, running away, unable to tag her, and grunting with effort throughout. Once Ming tagged him, he got one-shotted. The fight was very one-sided, which makes it a stomp.
In the finale? You mean when Ming had just been slammed into a wall by a boulder earthbent by AS Korra, and where Ming had no other source of water for the vast majority of the fight?
Smiling doesn't mean it was casual, we've seen Azula smile when she had Aang beaten as well. She was smiling because she knew she had the fight won.
We've seen Ming Hua smile during fights more than once anyways.
In media, a character smiling during a fight is almost always a clear indicator that they are having fun, not taking the fight seriously, and/or not concerned for themselves. These are all things that point to the character, in this case Ming Hua, not fighting seriously, i.e. holding back to an extent. Comparisons to Azula aren't valid as she was meant to be a sadistic, overconfident, and sarcastic character.
Mako not using lightning can also be attributed to morals, or the fact he just wasn't as good and/or smart a fighter as he was later on.
And yet throughout the entire series/comics, regardless of his morals and with only one exception, Mako never used lightning directly against an opponent. The only exception being against Amon, when Mako was being bloodbent and about to be killed or have his bending removed, as a final act of desperation. And that sustained burst of lightning didn't even KO Amon. Keep in mind that Amon has no other lightning resistance feats to scale him to, so you can't just say he's more durable to lightning than Ming Hua would be.
This is an impressive durability feat, but this is impossible to gauge how much it actually effected her. She still performed similar, her agility didn't seem hindered which is her best asset.
But it DID affect her to some degree, meaning she wasn't fighting at 100%. Unless you think having a boulder bigger than your body getting slammed into you by AS Korra, hard enough to crater the wall you smash into and get downed for 20 seconds, is something that won't hinder you at all. Come on now.
Also taking hits from an AS Korra and still being able to fight afterwards isn't really a crazy accomplishment.
Here we see Kuvira take 2 AS amped air blasts from Korra, after the first 1 she got right back up too, and won the fight after Korra collapsed.
Here's further reference to how much power an AS Amped air blast from Korra can have.
Zaheer still kept going, and Kuvira was able to recover and win after Korra collapsed. Tanking hits from Korra in the AS is far from something we haven't seen.
How is taking a boulder comparable to being tackled or slammed to the ground?
Even with Kuvira, she easily recovered from the first airblast with no signs of visible injury. It was only the second blast, which was more of a 3-second point blank air stream, that hurt her more. And even then, Korra's earthbending > Korra's airbending. The scaling you used to compare Korra's airbending is faulty since Korra clearly did not use that level of force against Kuvira.
Even base Korra was able to stagger Kuvira's mech with airbending (yes I know there's further context to this feat).
It's entirely context lol. Korra entered the AS before the first blast (we saw her eyes briefly glow), the airbenders were assisting her, the Mech had wires arounds its feet, and it still didn't budge. Only at her second attempt did the Mech move, and although we don't see Korra enter the AS, we have to assume she did. It would mako zero sense for an AS blast to do nothing but a base blast to push it back. This isn't a feat for Korra.
Which is a testament to how her agility wasn't hindered despite that boulder.
That doesn't mean she was at 100%.
Blocked his attacks with absolutely 0 succession compared to the other times. Her arms quickly evaporated after 2 attacks, you can't just dismiss this.
She had no additional water.
Which he dodges, this is an exceptional feat for Mako's reflexes.
Sure. But in their last fight, he was barely avoiding all of her attacks.
Mako and Ming Hua fought, and Mako's the only one who walked out alive. That's pretty clear.
You can't ignore the context, which you keep doing. It was a win via environmental manipulation. He won by directing lightning at the water that Ming was attached to. Ming isn't going to jump into the pool in this battlefield, especially since she would have knowledge of their 2nd encounter.
Ming blocked Mako's attacks, but Mako's potency evaporated her arms and left her in no condition to continue fighting. That's about as clear proof as you can get for Mako overwhelming her.
Still ignoring context.
You also didn't mention the part where Mako used jets to track Ming down and continue his offense
Irrelevant. Ming's mobility is 10x better and she actually regularly uses it in combat as opposed to Mako.
Or the fact his lightning was faster on the draw than Ming's striking.
I would sure hope so, it's lightning.
Mako being on the offensive is a testament to how he's improved in his fighting style compared to R1. Ming was blocking his attacks with her arms.So while yes she took a boulder, we can't gauge how much that hindered her performance. Her mobility was just fine, the only clear difference is Mako easily overpowering her attempts at blocking. Plus the fight didn't happen right after Ming took that boulder, we've seen characters recover from AS Korra attacks with faster speed.
He learnt from their first fight, sure, but Ming was not at 100%, did not have access to water for most of their fight, and lost due to the environment.
We cannot just use Ming getting hit by a boulder to dismiss Mako kicking her ass. Context matters, but we can't just ignore Mako's performance. I also doubt getting hit by a boulder would be enough for Ming to go from "stomping" Mako to getting stomped herself.
Except you are using context when it suits you, but ignoring it when it works against you.
Ming still had enough water to form 2 arms, which is her preferred fighting style.
With no available water to replenish her water arms.
Yes, Mako had more knowledge on Ming's fighting style and how to counter it, this is an advantage in a fight.
And now Ming has knowledge to use against Mako as well: she didn't know he could use lightning.
He now knows landing lightning to an arm = instant death, especially if connected to a source (the pool). He wouldn't need to dodge her attacks if he can just shoot lightning faster than she can strike.
Which I have proven is something he rarely does, in character or otherwise. Other than against Amon as a last ditch attempt to save himself, he has never used lightning directly against an opponent.
He knows he can draw lightning faster than she can attack him.
No duh, but he still probably wouldn't do it given consistency (or lack thereof).
He knows he can use jets to keep up with her best asset, which is her mobility.
His jets are laughable for mobility compared to Ming Hua.
He now has the raw power to overwhelm her, opposed to the past.
Ming has superior raw power, as I have proven.
I also don't think Ming grabbing and slamming Mako is a "one hit KO", it's certainly a lot different than if Ming just hit him with her arm, or threw some water at him.
But that's exactly what she did lol. She grabbed him with her arm and slammed him into a door, which is a one-hit KO. A projectile or slice from an ice/water blade would have the same effect, while a fire blast isn't going to one-shot Ming Hua. Waterbending is considered more lethal for a reason.
Her tripping into a hole had nothing to do with how that fight was going down. Mako would've just evaporated the very little water she had connected to her. Lightning is killing or wounding her badly regardless of where it hits her, if it lands Mako can just barrage her before she recovers.
They were fighting on an uneven environment, which isn't the case in this fight. You can't assume how the fight would have played out if she didn't trip.
Both fights were fair.
If you consider the circumstances of both fights as equally fair, then I don't know what to tell you. Their first fight was the more fair/neutral one, and we saw how that turned out. The circumstances of this fight is similar to their first, with the only difference that matters being knowledge.
From mostly fodder, fodder that P'Li and Zaheer mostly took care of by themselves. P'Li has proven she's above Lin and Suyin as a duo, and was in general the biggest threat on the battlefield at the time. So having her aid alone is a huge advantage. Plus Mako and Bolin did the same thing briefly vs the entire Red Lotus at once.
And how about all the fodder that Mako has mostly fought...?
Bolin and Mako never fought the entire Red Lotus on their own, at least not in an actual fight. Their encounter when Korra was kidnapped was hardly a fight as the Red Lotus were focused on escape and Mako/Bolin were ducking for cover for most of it.
Then they stalemated one more time before the fight was over.
Taking random shots at each other while both are behind cover isn't a fight.
She had very little left, there was nothing she could've done with the water she had left on her arms.
Assumption.
Meanwhile, this is how much water she had before Mako's attacks. Which goes to show how much of her water Mako actually evaporated with his AP.
And yet in their first fight, Ming's arms never evaporated.
He doesn't consistently use it because he started using it on the last episode of the second to last season. His mobility has proven to be good enough to keep pace with Ming Hua in a fight, with his jets being the biggest reason for this.
False, he used fire jets as early as Book 1. He just rarely uses this, and he's only done so like 3 times in combat. Not consistent.
Not only was Ming vs Kya actually a good fight, Ming got directly tagged trying to go for the kill.
Which is a feat for Kya, considering this was the only time she tagged Ming throughout their entire fight.
Plus Kya was shown on screen to evade her attacks consistently. She got tagged a few times, but she was able to quickly recover each time she did.
Yeah, but Kya was struggling the entire time to avoid Ming's attacks. She got tagged several times and injured each time.
*You then go into a very lengthy analysis of Tonraq vs. Unalaq and Zaheer vs. Kya for some reason, which has nothing to do with the debate, so I'm ignoring all of that.*
Mako's jets are pretty comparable in use to EOS Azula's (without the comet), during the Boiling Rock episode. So I wouldn't dismiss this as an average technique.
Yeah, but he still rarely used it in combat.
The improvement is shown to you on screen. He needed boosts from Bolin to attack while in mid air in B2, he didn't in B3, and could attack from larger heights than just jumping and kicking.
The proof of him improving is simply him using techniques he didn't use before. I don't know why you need statements to prove this, especially when they clearly helped his performance.
Showing new techniques does not mean he just learnt them, it just means he didn't need to use them before. As I said, there is zero indication or proof that he received additional training. Especially since there is no other firebender he would have received training from except Korra.
Depends what you mean by tag, Ming's water arms act as her actual arms. So if he evaporates them at will like he did in the finale, I don't see how that's any different.
Because tagging Ming's water arms does no harm to her?
Busting wood isn't impressive, Katara did it with nothing more than herown sweat.
Lowball attempt. The source of water does not matter; the potency of the bending matters.
Busting chains isn't impressive either, Zuko can do the same thing without bending at all.
Because Zuko has displayed pretty impressive physicals, especially as the Blue Spirit. Mako never broke chains.
Ming busting metal is impressive, but it's not like she straight up busted the door from the middle of it. Nor is it comparable to the density of the metal bars Mako was trying to cut through while in prison.
This works against you. Mako could not bust through the metal so he had to resort to melting through it.
The drill feat is impressive, but it was a specific move designed for a specific task. It's not really combat applicable either since we've never seen Ming Hua do something like that when actually fighting. Also if we look closely:
It isn't meant to be combat applicable, it's meant to display her raw power, which is superior to anything Mako has done in potency.
I already addressed this, Mako couldn't get the full force of his lightning because he was being bloodbent, the strain it took for him to raise his fingertips alone suggest this.
Also this still knocked Amon down long enough for Mako to do this.
You're trying to save face here, but it won't work. Mako was about to lose his bending and was very desperate here. Mako struggled to move but this was a point-blank and continuous stream of lightning that sent Amon flying across the room, so saying that it was not full force is nonsense. And Amon still wasn't KO'd from it.
First is that Amon is absurd compared to most of the verse physically, and that Ming doesn't compare to him.
True, but he also has zero other lightning durability feats. That's all that matters here.
You're suggesting Ming Hua can do something she's never done in any of her fights. She's never shown to make shields of water like Katara for defenses. Nor does she come anywhere close to Katara as a bender, especially in raw power.
Water shields are one of the most basic waterbending moves, so to say Ming Hua couldn't make one is ridiculous. Furthermore, I never compared Ming Hua's waterbending to Katara's, I was merely pointing out how water can block lightning. If Katara cab block Azula's Comet-amped lightning, Ming can certainly block Mako's much weaker lightning.
This is something Ming Hua has never done. She's always relied on the strength of her arms to block attacks, which against lightning is suicide because her disability will let the lightning just conduct through the rest of her body if it lands, plus if Mako's regular fireblasts can overpower her arms, his lightning most definitely can.
There's also nothing that suggests Ming Hua can dodge lightning, and even if she can perceive it, she doesn't have any proper defense against it other than trying to dodge it. Due to Mako being able to generate lightning instantly, he can literally just spam lightning at her, and she has no choice but to keep dodging hoping to eventually find an opening or get close.
Aang and Amon dodging lightning are just absurd feats for their reflexes, Korra also scales due to her laser feat, but Ming Hua's/Ty Lee's? They're a maybe, but nothing's conclusive here. Plus Mako's lightning is faster on the draw than the lightning Aang evaded.
All of this is redundant due to the simple fact that Mako does not consistently use lightning directly on opponents. He did it once against Amon as a desperate attempt to save himself. Two of his other uses were against vehicles, and another was dodged by Amon while he had his back turned. The lightning he used against Ming Hua was not directly on her, but the water that her arms were connected to. Morals doesn't change anything, as we've never even seen a pissed off or serious Mako use lightning directly against an opponent.
Amon >>> Ming Hua, just to make that clear.
In what? Strength and durability, sure. Speed? Not really. Ming's speed scales above Desna and Eska, and is enough to contend against Mako. She lacks the standalone speed feats that Amon has, but she makes up for it with scaling.
Morals are off here so we can ignore Mako not using lightning due to morals. Plus he's been able to tag her arms plenty of times with his firebending, his lightning draw speed is superior to his firebending, and his accuracy isn't any worse so.
And yet not once in your two posts did you even refer to Mako's morals or show what he has done with morals off. Here's a hint: he didn't use lightning.
We can see it tag her tendril first, she even moved it back due to the shock from it, the remainder hit the water. Even if the actual bolt isn't conclusive enough for you, the light and sound is if you play it at .25 speed. Plus another 1 of her tendrils was connected to the lightning in the shot after this.
It went through her tendril and didn't even conduct along the tendril.
Her not being fully serious is just an assumption based off of her smiling. She was trying to get to Korra and needed to beat Mako as fast as possible to accomplish that. Mako lost, but he wasn't stomped. You can't say Mako was stomped in the first fight, then say Ming wasn't in the second.
I sure can, and most people will agree. Not only that, but their second fight was much more context-heavy.
Is this supposed to be impressive? I never denied her being able to react and block Mako's attacks. If her arms are getting evaporated it doesn't matter if she can react fast enough to block them, she doesn't have the power to block them, that's the point.
Except her arms were not getting evaporated at all in their first fight, and in their second fight, she had zero water to draw from. That isn't the case here.
Ming does not have a faster draw speed than Mako, there is nothing that suggests this.
Considering she was fast enough to blitz and one-shot Desna and Eska, and consistently pressure Mako and Kya with her attacks, yeah, she does.
No it's not. Mako showcasing techniques he never did before is enough evidence, plus the fact the power behind his blasts seemed to do more in his favor.
Plus it's not fair to suggest he didn't or couldn't improve, when we've seen plenty of characters improve vastly in skill with nothing more than experience. Whether it be Toph's sandbending, Aang's seismic sense, Bolin's lavabending, Zaheer's airbending, and plenty more.
I addressed this already but feel the need to do it again. Displaying new techniques does not mean he just learnt them! You have no proof for this.
All of those examples are not comparable to using new techniques within a span of 4 episodes without any indication of training or knowledge.
Which is just a feat for Amon, this isn't an anti-feat for Mako. Amon's already been proven to be absurd in reaction time, statements prove this as well, since Mako pretty much said he was impossible to beat because he was impossible to tag, a statement Korra never disagreed with for reference.
Never said it was an anti-feat for Mako. But if Amon with his back turned can react to Mako's lightning after it was fired, Ming Hua could definitely react to his lightning, especially since it's a telegraphed move.
Octopus form is suicide here. So is going in the pool, or even sticking her arm in it. Mako can traverse the entire battlefield efficiently as well with his jets, why the cave would be much different than this I don't know. Plus Ming was able to traverse the Air temple casually, and Mako had no struggle dealing with it.
Not really, considering Mako never tried to tag Ming Hua or her water arms directly. Ming doesn't need to touch the pool to draw more water, and she can bend the water from the pool to attack Mako.
The jets he has used twice in combat? Right.
Strongly disagree, Ming's only way of knocking Mako out is the way she used in R1, and her only way of killing him is stabbing, she failed to KO Kya with basic attacks multiple times, and failed to blitz her in her attempt at stabbing her. The same Kya who was downed by 2 attacks from Zaheer.
Any move that involves grabbing Mako's body/limbs with her arms or stabbing/slicing him will end it for him. And since this is morals off, she won't be shy about slicing him up. The only reason Kya survived was because she was also a waterbender and could manipulate the projectiles/attacks Ming used. The same can't be said for Mako.
I don't see why you think this, I said Mako is below Zuko and Korra in firebending, and logically everyone better than those 2, I think that's completely fair.
I wasn't talking about firebending, I was talking about in general. You've called Ming fodder multiple times lol.
Zaheer is clearly above Ming Hua, their performances against Kya prove this, not even mentioning Zaheer's other feats.
Without flight, Ming Hua would slaughter Zaheer. With flight, it's more debatable but still favouring Ming Hua.
Mako's lightning draw speed is superior to Ming Hua's striking speed, clear visual evidence proves this. This also adds to the fact Ming's disability means lightning is suicide if it hits her arms.
So what this means, from a starting distance of 10m especially, Mako's lightning is far too dangerous for Ming Hua to fight on the defensive. She simply lacks the proper defense to compete with lightning, her only hope is to simply dodge it. There's an issue with this however:
She can't dodge forever. This is a fight, and that means at some point she's going to have to attack him, which means 1 of 2 things.
She has to either be able to dodge lightning while getting close to Mako at the same time, a feat only Amon has accomplished on screen.
She has to have some form of long distance offense that can phase Mako.
Neither of the above applies here, even Aang couldn't dodge Ozai's lightning forever, he eventually had to redirect it when he got caught. I know Mako isn't Ozai or anywhere close, but neither is Ming to Aang. Plus this environment doesn't support the same amount of distance Aang and Ozai traveled, Mako's proven his jets can keep up with Ming Hua, so she can't just dodge forever. Ming can throw water at Mako, but he's already proven he can block that with shields.
It sucks for Ming because Mako can generate lightning with no more than moving his arm. It also sucks because his firebending has proven it's powerful enough to evaporate her arms, so he quite literally doesn't need lightning to beat her. If Ming is knocked down or tries to retreat to the pool, Mako can just charge up 2 lightning bolts with both hands and that's it. Fight over.
You mean the lightning he does not consistently use in combat, regardless of morals, or even use directly against opponents except for one instance of pure desperation? Or do you mean the lightning that couldn't even down Amon after a continuous blast?
And that's aside from the fact that Ming would have knowledge of Mako's lightning going into this fight and wouldn't put herself in a disadvantageous position.
Going back to what I said in the opener, Mako has:
Superior draw speed, this was proven with evidence.
More lethal forms of bending, his lightning > anything Ming offers.
The mobility to keep up with Ming or track her down if she tries to traverse the battlefield, he isn't more mobile than Ming, but he's good enough and he's proven this.
The durability to tank majority of Ming's attacks, the only way she's really KOing him is with something similar to fight 1, which he now knows the technique and to keep his distance as much as possible.
He also has more raw power with his firebending alone, Octopus Ming can't beat him due to lightning, and just 2 arms simply isn't enough.
Still don't see why Mako loses, he has the more important advantages where it matters.
Superior speed with lightning, sure. But in terms of Ming's waterbending vs. Mako's firebending, Ming has proven to be faster. That also goes for her movement speed, reaction speed, and combat speed.
Mako's lightning clearly isn't very lethal considering Amon could take a continuous stream of it without even being KO'd. Ming's piercing attacks were slicing through stone statues, and she tried doing so against Kya, so Mako would get bisected. There's actual lethality for you.
Mako has used fire jets in combat on like two occasions, so we can't pretend like it's consistent for him. Even then, Ming's mobility outclasses Mako's by a significant margin.
Ming one-shotted Mako by slamming him through a door with her water arm lol. Her blunt force attacks were cratering the ground. Her piercing attacks were cutting up stone statues. Mako isn't tanking either of those.
Ming's drill feat is more raw power than anything Mako has done.
You not seeing why Mako loses is something I don't quite understand, but it's a good thing it doesn't matter, because it's up to the sensible voters :)
Conclusion
According to my opponent, Ming Hua is overhyped and fodder. Calling a character overhyped is totally fair as it is a subjective thing. Calling Ming Hua fodder on more than one occasion though? That's not only false, but a clear show of lowballing and bias. The misinterpretation and unjust lowballing of a character is an indication of a person's skewed view of the Avatar verse and its hierarchy.
Ming Hua is a GOAT and deserves more respect.
To recap a few things:
Ming held the upper hand throughout the entirety of their first fight, forcing Mako to constantly dodge and avoid her attacks. Although he was able to do so, he was clearly struggling and almost got tagged several times. This was Ming not fighting 100% seriously too. In terms of environment and context, this was also their most fair/neutral fight.
In their second fight, Ming wasn't fighting in her best shape considering she had just gotten cratered into a wall by a boulder sent by AS Korra. No one would be at 100% after that. Mako was more on the offensive this time, but Ming had no other source of water to draw from. She also slipped, causing her to lose her remaining water. Mako was able to (barely) survive her octopus form salvo and won by surprising Ming Hua with a lightning attack to the pool of water, which she was connected to via her water arms. So this was Ming not in perfect condition, in an initially unfavourable environment, losing to Mako due to a surprise lightning attack that took advantage of the environment Ming was in at the time.
This time around, Ming will have knowledge that Mako can use lighting, she will have a source of water to draw from, she won't be holding back at all, and she will be fighting in perfect condition. She isn't going to offer Mako a chance to conduct electricity along the pool and her arms again, and as I have proven, it is very unlikely he will shoot lightning directly at Ming Hua once we take consistency into consideration.
Overall, Ming Hua has fewer but better feats. She has fewer low-ends, many of which are contextual, while Mako has a lot more low-ends.
Landing one of her blunt force attacks would seriously harm or one-shot Mako. Landing any of her piercing attacks would prove lethal.
Ming has a decisive edge in mobility and speed, with superior raw power, and a lot more versatility. She also has more impressive feats against fodder and named opponents.
No amount of wanking Mako and lowballing Ming Hua will change the fact that she would win for a significant majority.
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