We examine those rings in which the elements are sums or differences of nilpotents and potents (also including in some special cases tripotents). Such decompositions of matrices over certain rings and fields are also studied. These results of ours somewhat support recent achievements presented in a publication due to Abyzov-Tapkin (Siber. Math. J., 2021).In particular, letting n be an arbitrary natural number, the class of weakly n-torsion clean rings is defined and studied. As direct applications of the facts presented above, some characterization theorems describing the structure of these rings up to an isomorphism and their matrix analogs, are established.The obtained results of ours somewhat supply recent achievements presented in a publication due to Danchev-Matczuk (Contemp. Math., 2019).2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 16D60; 16S34; 16U60. Key words and phrases. clean rings, strongly clean rings, n-torsion clean rings, weakly ntorsion clean rings, idempotents, tripotents, potents, nilpotents, units.