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Spell damage scales faster on Elemental Shamans than it does on any other class in the game, with the possible exception of Affliction Warlocks (not super familiar with theorycrafting on DOTs, so I'll stay away from it). Crit scales nicely too, but only assuming you're going to be limited by mana concerns. Personally, I always have a Shadow Priest while raiding 25-mans, and in Karazhan/whatever where I don't have one I use Totem of the Pulsing Earth and mana pots/Drums of Restoration to keep nuking. In general, "I don't want to spend mana pots" isn't a compelling reason to adhere to any practice.
Anyway, crit is nice. But adopt some Mage theorycrafting, which states hit > damage > crit even for Fire Mages (210% crit damage as opposed to our 200%). Now consider that Lightning Mastery allows Lightning Bolt to scale ridiculously well with +damage, and consider that any Elemental Shaman with half-decent gear is able to get hit capped. In that case, it doesn't make sense to be socketing your gear with 8 crit rating gems. Yes, crit is nice and it's important to have ~20% unbuffed spell crit on your character sheet. But crit doesn't become this end-all-be-all of itemization until your damage is limited by mana. Which, assuming ideal group set-ups, it shouldn't be.
Personally, I use a Spell Penetration enchant on my cloak and put dmg/stam gems in my blue sockets. You can milk more damage out of +9 damage gems, but I see one of the class's strengths as being the toughest DPS casters out there. Being an absolutely min/maxed tailoring-style glass cannon doesn't appeal to me, particularly since damage gets thrown around so liberally in TBC raids. To my thinking, my personal DPS isn't as important as the buffs I'm giving to my group on top of that DPS. I cannot buff my group while dead.
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