Orbs are better for offence. When you dont have orbs, stick to the bland stuff like b2,3 D1 lightning, to do chip, build meter, and build that trait time up.
Once you get the orb again its mixups time. People will start opening themselves up if every time black adam touches you with orbs its a 50/50 b2/d3 mixup, and then you have throws in there aswell. And its all doing chip damage, and is safe, and can be used to do whatever you want outside the basic mixups....
The fact nobody uses trait to cancel in blockstrings is silly, it lets you play so creatively on offense.