Does anyone know how these annointments compare to each other? +25% crit doesn’t sound like much in comparison to +100% damage but I’m not sure how the multiplicative/additive numbers work out. Has anyone tested this on the exact same weapon or know how the calculations work out?
Edit: (gokpok did some testing for us. Conclusions below)
It’s safe to say that the 100% damage will just about always win out. If the numbers were equal or close it would be one thing, but 100% is a sizable chunk of gun damage and 25% crit doesn’t offer enough in comparison.
Think of sniper rifles. Base damage accessories were just about always better than crit, and the bonuses to both were much closer (I believe it was 20% for both in BL2). With gun damage being 4X the crit bonus, there really isn’t much competition.
And that’s my assumption, but I was hoping someone would have the numbers or calculations to show the differences.
@Derch
I’m no good with numbers. Since you’re the critical hit guy, would you be able to do the maths?
Sorry to do this, but anyone who hung out on the TPS forums knows that me and numbers are not on good terms 
I don’t know the damage formula for this game yet
I would always take the 100%!
Why? Simply because you only benefit from the crit bonus when you actually crit.
The 100% bonus benefits both normal and crit damage because when your normal damage is bigger, so are your crits.
That’s a really good point. Although, I tend to crit about ~80% of the time since my aim is pretty good so this isn’t quite as valid for some people as for others.
Still, I like to see calcs so I’ll be really interested to find out when someone is able to check these out.
If I run across the same weapon in those two different variations I’ll definitely try to test it myself.
I did some testing. Nothing formal, but it’s basically what @boombumr concluded. The +100% damage (the Rakk one works the same) doubled the damage, while the other one was a marginal increase.
Target: Agonizer 9000 (NVHM M1 w/o debuffs)
Character: Fl4k (No skill points and other gear used)
Gun: Jakobs Carbine (one was a masher, but shouldn’t really matter)
+100% damage
+25% critical damage
Math is pretty simple:
1000 base damage, crit is a basic x2 multiplier so another 1000 dmg when you crit = 2000 dmg.
So 25% bonus crit makes 125% crit = 2250 dmg
100% Bonus dmg:
Base dmg + 100% Dmg Bonus: 1000 + 1000 = 2000
Base dmg + 100% Dmg Bonus x2crit: 1000 + 1000 = 2000 x2 = 4000
Correct me if you find errors
It calculates like that:
[BaseDamage] * ( 1 + [GunDamageBonuses] ) * ( 1 + [GunDamageGuardianRank] ) * [BaseCrit] * ( 1 + [CritBonuses] ) * (1 + [CritGurdianRank] ) = [Result]
The more gun damage you already have the more valuable crit bonuses become due to them being another multiplier. But since most gun damage bonuses (from skills and gear) are minor while +100% from the anointment is crazy high compared to the crit anointment the former should always win over the crit one.
Unlike crit dmg calculation, I haven’t looked into gun damage calculation yet in BL3, but from all I see it seems to be similar to BL2. The main point is that crit dmg is based on gun dmg, so in a simple choice of +50% gun dmg vs. +50% crit dmg without any other bonuses gun dmg clearly wins because the end result is the same on crits but lower on regular hits:
With gun dmg +50%:
Regular hit: 1000 x 150% = 1500
Critical hit: 1000 x 150% x 2 = 3000
With crit dmg +50%:
Regular hit: 1000 x 100% = 1000
Critical hit: 1000 x 2 x 150% = 3000
Now this can change to some extent based on all the other skills and gear and stuff going on, but the general tendency remains. With lots of other additive crit bonuses, +50% gun dmg may even lead to a higher increase on crits than +50% crit bonus.
In BL2 there were only a few situations where crit dmg applied but gun dmg didn’t, like melee attacks. But in BL3 melee can’t crit so that one’s out of the window already.
So there may be exceptions but as a general rule I’d choose gun dmg over crit dmg if they’re the same value, and much more so if gun dmg has a higher value.
edit: FL4K’s Fade Away is a special case where crit dmg does nothing, as it’s based on gun dmg but generally unaffected by crit modifiers. You can increase Fade Away damage with more gun dmg, but you can’t increase it with more crit dmg.
There’s not one right answer for this one.
+crit favours a high base damage generating build as it amplifies every +damage bonus that came before it.
+damage favours a high crit score generating cbuild by giving it more base damage to amplify with all that crit it has already.
Which is “best” depends entirely on the other buffs a build is already running.