Guild Wars 2

a bit of a noob question here.
I see from the wiki that superior sigil of air has a 1.1 coefficient vs 0.85 for s.s.o. fire
They are both on a 50% chance trigger with internal cd of 3sec x air and 5sec x fire.
Fire is aoe and air single target

Which one is better? How do you calculate the damage? Is it based on condition damage?

thank you

Depends on where/how you’ll use it.
In an area with a bigger number of targets and with a weapon that allow you to hit many targets (ranger axe, thief sb, necro staff …) fire looks better imo. If you want more 1v1 damage then air works better.

Belzebu.3912:

Depends on where/how you’ll use it.
In an area with a bigger number of targets and with a weapon that allow you to hit many targets (ranger axe, thief sb, necro staff …) fire looks better imo. If you want more 1v1 damage then air works better.

On the other hand Fire on a single target weapon can be nice too since that lets you bypass its single limitation.

You can just use both as well.

Sorry for not being very clear but the most important question is, given the coefficient how do you calculate the damage?

Damage = Coefficient*Power*Weapon Strength*Critdmg mult(if crit)/Target Defense.

More normally we care more about damage per second, which is Coeff*Power*Weapon Strength*(Critrate*Critdmg mult + (1-Critrate))/(Cooldown*Target Defense). In this case we drop the crit term because neither of these sigils can crit.

Because the rest are constants, when comparing attack types like this, just use coefficient per second.

The coefficient per second of air is 1.1/3 = 0.367.
The coefficient per second of fire is 0.85/5 = 0.17.

Dividing these values, for fire to be better than air you must consistently fight more than 2.16 targets – bear in mind fire can affect up to 5, so it has the potential to be more than twice as effective if in a stacking situation.

This is why the sigil of fire costs so much more than the sigil of air.