Yes fire still heavily relies on crit but the devs changed the way secondary stats are handled throughout the expansion. Instead of having 15% crit in T19 and 60% in T21, you'll have 40% in T19 and 60% in T21.
This means 2 things :
- spec that rely on a specific stat (mainly fire mage, fury war and MM hunt) will be playable in the first tier
- specs that scale very well won't get as crazy as they used to in the last tier