[quote=@CelesteEste]
Question, how "raw" should elemental powers be? Like, not what I am thinking of doing, but should fire powers be raw elemental burst of flame / lava or could it be something like, the creation of a fire lance / whip or the ability to throw fireworks and the like? 
[/quote]

Depends on the generation of the character you're running. Ideally a [i]new[/i] generation magical girl is quite literally out of the box so to say, like maybe a week since they were chosen as a guardian. So the extent of their powers will be incredibly raw in practice until they either play around with it and figure it out on their own (which will take a lot longer for them to figure out form and control), or they are instructed directly by their elder.

As for the elders, as creative as you can get. Molten lava can be arguably Fire or Metal depending on perspective. Similarly can the water magical girl control the water inside of plants? My personal take would be yes, with extreme difficulty and imprecision since it's like manipulating a puppet by their strings rather than by their arms directly. If that makes sense.

So, the primary difference is the new fire magical girl would be needing to really focus just to spew fire out of her hands while the elder could say smack her hands together Full Metal Alchemist style and part her hands to a literal fire lance and throw it to cause massive explosions. 

So tl:dr, raw or refined relative to their experience. And mind you, the elder magical girls are also "past their prime" and are slowly declining in power while the new ones are slowly rising in power.

I hope it helps!