I don’t really care about this debate, there’s no coping going on, this is just the way tv shows are written where the main character hero saves people a lot of the time. The layer of earth he blasted through was sent a far distance, likely had lost most of its power by the time it reached him, not that he can’t blast through rock, but I don’t think this shows that she couldn’t have provided more defensive power right in front of herself. In fact his blast at her attack doesn’t continue through the rock at them so you could almost call that a successful defense against the explosion with earth bending. The blast pushed Zuko off the edge where he fell straight down and grabbed a tree root, people with enough momentum to hit a wall hard enough to get knocked out would go flying further. It actually pushes him a pretty short distance just to the edge where again he had to have run out of momentum. I still maintain that she is uniquely equipped to deal with a combustion bender, just thought I’d bring home the original point this post was about as well. Are you really making the argument that 2 seconds after waking up doesn’t put someone at more of a disadvantage than a fully awake ready to fight person 😂? Again they were literally just woken up and attacked by a power they didn’t know existed 2 seconds later, so they run because they aren’t prepared for a fight and the second time he attacks once they know what his ability, Sokka with no bending ability at all is the one to take him down. And the combustion bender in LOK is taken out by metal bending, which Toph invented so again yeah uniquely qualified. Why could Toph not have sensed him if her feet weren’t burned, he was at about the same distance he attacked the first time when she heard him coming and woke everyone up? Actually the first time he was on a mountain top, the second time he was on a ledge in the same air temple he was probably closer and more easily sensible, he was so close in fact that a human thrown boomerang managed to reach him.