[quote=Larfleeze]I'm pretty sure Bolin was only capable of lavabending because he had both fire nation and earth kingdom parents. Maybe it's genetic in some way as well as spiritual. [/quote]

I'm not a big fan of "Mixed heritage = More powers" in general. I can put up with it and it's a viable option for various power ups, but at that point why wouldn't Aang and Katara's kids have some funky Air + Water mash-up power? I preferred it when it was just "Mako got firebending, Bolin got Earthbending". Not to mention you then have to wonder "Well, who were Ghazan's parents then?"

[quote=K-97]It's likely that Ghazan was using friction to melt the rocks into lava, I imagine it would work like rubbing you legs to warm them up or rubbing two sticks together to produce a fire. Except instead of two sticks you are rubbing every individual ''rock particle'' in the targeted area together in order to generate massive amounts of heat; the result of which melts the rock into lava.[/quote]

That sounds a little too complicated for someone to just pull off randomly. Ghazan had the benefit of (presumably) years of training, unless he was in prison for about half his life, but Bolin just sort of did it out of pure desperation. To me it just comes off as something it'd take years to even grasp the basics of, let alone use it in a combat situation. Then again Toph could do crap like turn sand into solid rock at the age of twelve so....screw it.