Id say just thinking about what you are actually doing helps instead of mindlessly reading guide. If you want to really play fire, gem crit and focus only on crit. Is it ideal? Big no by far but there is difference between enjoying what you play and forcing yourself to do "right thing". Its the same thing on low levels. What you doing there is probably not ideal, but it might be right thing for you. I have 4.1k fire mage rn and hes doign 7k in ToC. Also dont blame everything on gear, due to slow cast fire mage has huge emphasis on positioning and active cast time.
Must be mentioned that Improved Scorch doesn't stack with Improved Shadow Bolt of affli/demo warlocks and with Winter's Chill of frost mages.
In other words, if you have a warlock (affli or demo) in the raid group or (suddenly) a frost mage, you should not use Scorch. If you do only 25ppl raids you can probably forget about that talent at all and spend those points anywhere else.
whats BiS wand?