JetJet wrote:i think people just go max damage when their ed is capped.
Hmm. Really depends.
Max damage isn‘t affected by ED. And t also doesn’t raise the mindamage, which is both a con.
Foe example if your weapon has 600 damage in total and 300 of that are thanks to max damage, 5 orbs with each +6 max damage would basically add 30 max damage, totaling in 630 max damage. This is a 5% damage up, but Only for the max damage, while in total it would only add 2,5%. (Given the mindamage= maxdamage, you‘d have a (600+630):2 which ends up as an average damage of 615. and 15 of 600 is only a 2,5% damage up)
If you choose to go with deadly strike however, you get 5% deadly strike which translates to 5% to max AND min damage. So in that Case, deadly strike is clearly better.
EWD is another story. If you already have lots of EWD from skills, like for example the claw sin passive or a high level Dragonheart, ewd is basically useless since it adds so little.
In traprat‘s case, I can‘t help much because I don‘t know what values you can reach in endgame with ewd from skills.
In general you can say: use max damage orbs if the weapon damage in total is rather low, and use ewd when you have little ewd from skills. As for deadly strike: it always helps.