DR Use of Elemental Powers

I was just reading a complaint about the Forbidden Five's non-use of their powers and realized it dovetailed with one of my complaints about DR in general: The ninjas' elemental powers are extremely under/poorly-utilized. For example, in one fight, Nya is just using balls of water as "cannonballs" (rather than anything specific to water), Zane apparently forgets he can make ice bridges when Cole's mech runs out of elemental power to make a rock one, and Lloyd's just general lack of green...