Here are a few possibilities:

1) There is some bug related to dual-spec. We are fairly confident this is not a problem. It did have some bugs when 3.1 first launched, but we think we have caught them all. Therefore we think this issue is just a red herring complicating the rest of the discussion.

2) Elementals suffered a lot more from losing 5% crit from the Improved Scorch et al. change than did other casters. However, balance druids and some warlocks, also reasonably crit dependent, did not seem to drop.

3) Ulduar fights require a lot more movement, so Elementals can't cast as many spells. (I'm talking about direct damage spells here, not totems.)

4) There is some bug with Lava Burst or another spell that we cannot yet locate. We have looked at this a few times and everything seemed to be working correctly, but we can't completely eliminate this as a problem.

As I have said in the other, longer thread, we need to understand the cause of the problem before we go making any shotgun style changes that may or may not fix it.

I will also point out that the Ulduar set for Elementals is a pretty decent upgrade. You should be in a better relative position with full Ulduar gear than you were with full Naxx gear.

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Ghostcrawler
Lead Systems Designer

As I posted in the other active thread on this topic, we still cannot find any bugs with Elemental. We looked at a lot of numbers from before and after 3.1 and (except for the lower crit values) the numbers don't seem very different. It could be that other classes, notably rogues and Feral druids, just improved.

Nonetheless, we do think Elemental is a little low so there is likely to be a small buff coming. I feel obligated to add the standard no promises caveat.