Sufficiently powerful firebenders can probably create lava, though they wouldn't be able to bend it like Ghazan.
There's a cutscene in Crisis Core where Genesis lobs fire balls at Sephiroth & then jerks his hand back to send the ones that missed crashing into him from all sides. The moral of this story is that Firebenders could control fireballs that they throw out, instead of just using them for jabs.
Could generate several fire bombs along a weapon & then hit the target, detonating them all at once.
Could send a large amount of heat into weak footing, fracturing it.
Use it to vitrify sand in a desert setting, reducing traction under an opponent. This could also potentially work well with the jet move. Or lead to self-injury. Whichever.
I've always wondered why nobody ever made a fire tornado.
Firebenders also don't tend to attack with fire around their fists or feet.
Differently shaped fire blasts could be useful for confusion, such as rings, fireballs from the mouth, etc.
The jet effect could be useful to amplify the force of an attack or a throw.
Supermensch wrote:
Sufficiently powerful firebenders can probably create lava, though they wouldn't be able to bend it like Ghazan.
You could team up with an non-lavabending Earthbender. Rocky throws the earth & Sparky melts it.
solar bending the user manipulates the flames from the sun and fucks shit up not too much or he could destroy life itself if not the entire earth
I JUST REWATCHED THE CROSSROADS OF DESTINY WHERE ZUKO USES CREATES TWO FIRE WHIPS (WHICH WAS VERY MUCH A WATERBENDING STYLE MOVE).
Fire has the subtype with the most history in lightning bending(aside from healing in the water tribe) so I don't really think it's lacking in that regard, especially considering it has very little in common with conventional bending wheras something like metalbending is simply a high level form of earth bending(it literally uses impurities, ie regular Earth, in order to manipulate the metal as a whole). There's also combustion bending which is even more distinctive in that it is the only form of bending that we know of which requires a certain mark or medium on the user.
There's also applications of direct heat(eg Zuko melting ice while underwater) and heat redirection(eg Sozin causing lava to solidify by syphoning heat through himself and into the atmosphere). I think the former is basically the same as firebending in general but without focusing the energy in such a way as to cause ignition. The latter may be a subtype or not, but as we only see it once it's hard to argue.
So fire has plenty of subtypes and applications, it just so happens basic firebending is well suited to combat and that's mostly what we see. Beyond that it's no coincidence the fire nation advanced their technology more than other nations in the hundred year war; forging metal and powering machines are significant ways to use firebending that we don't focus on so much because it's a bit mundane compared to the forms of a Firebending master.
Air Bending is actually the type that lacks subtypes or variation more than any other; the only subtype is levitation which is so exceedingly rare that only two people have ever done it. If anything I think lightning bending should have been a subtype of Air all along...
In saying that I think heat sense would be nice for a firebending prodigy to discover(like seismic sense but awareness of life, fire and variations of temperature).
Also, what Jeong Jeong said to Katara about firebending only bringing destruction got me wondering; isn't heat used in some therapy? It's not going to heal major injuries or anything, but musculo-skeletal injuries should improve with the correct application of heat. A master may even be able to use a Fire-bending version of Reiki; it would fit the Eastern basis for bending and some related concepts already established in the Avatar diegesis.
Beyond that I do wonder at the limits of shaping Firebending; if you can make whips is it possible to lend flames enough shape to become a projectile(like a fire lance as opposed to fireballs) or weapon with a more specific function? Flame sword, flame axe etc even a fire bow for long range?
This also brings up something I find strange; it seems like firebenders can only control their own fire. I find it wierd they can't actively manipulate flame that's already burning; I guess because they generate their Bending rather than manipulating something external. Although they can magnify the flames but I don't see any instances of manipulating existing fire; guess it's ambiguous. Maybe a potential subtype though; so a Master of this could quench fires at will and burn things around them to magnify their bending significantly.
Also wonder if a fake sun could be made using your own firebending which then sustains your power at night, or even increased during the day. Think Bardock's blutz spirit ball but Avatar version.
I got a move!
Fire-charged blast: During the Sozin's Comet a firebender emites a fast amount of fire from his hand. It uses all of the user's energy so it can go at a specific speed. Then the user releases it as if it was a giant hyper speed bullet, the blast deals with a lot of damage to anything caught up in it.
Hello I just have to say that because firebenders can regulate heat, and others have said this, as in body heat: With heat regulation and condencing the flames until you have an object, you can hold the weapon/item so that where your hand/body-part touches, the object can't burn you for you have turned that part of your body so cold that the two tempertures cancle out. Making it so that you can have armor made of flames.
Hey, so similar to OP here I have been working on a D&D modification to add bending classes and systems and I have been pulling a lot of firebending abilities from an anime called Fire Force because they have so many creative uses for fire that I could totally see firebenders coming up with after years and years of study