If you 're looking at a in-game stat table, maiev tends to not lead stats because she doesn’t have as much opportunity to deal poke damage to enemy heroes. If/when she’s going in, it’s usually as a combo to enable other heroes to follow up, or for her to chain targets down and get the kill.
Other roles, healers and supports can constantly be skirmishing to rack up numbers, heal it back, and then rack up more because stuff isn’t dying. So ,so long as stuff dies, Maiev had her contribution.
Depending on the build, some allies can ruin Maiev’s damage potential; some knock-back effects break umbral bind without the snap damage, so if you build around that, some things could be undercutting your expected damage (ie, I think Haymaker breaks bind so reckless muradin’s can gimp allied maievs)
That said, a key part of getting damage with Maiev is matching the right build with the right Spirit of Vengeance. There’s 3 ways to make use of E
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Cast it before the engage (away from the enemy team, out of their vision so they can’t tell if Spirit was used, or where it went) and then run up, Bind and Blink to instantly snap umbral.
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Cast E into the enemy team, blink (then vault to dodge incoming cc) and then run back out.
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Flank the backline of the enemy, Umbral bind, and then cast E through them to blink back toward your team to snap the bind. This method can work with cdr or refresh (lvl 20) on spirit of vengeance to blink in, and then blink back out, so it’s kinda a mix of methods 1 and 2.
Spirit and Bind have a few tactical interactions between them:
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If Bind is snapped with a blink, then all targets are uniformly pulled and it clusters enemy heroes nicely into a Q combo.
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If Bind is snapped by walking (or displacement) then targets will be staggered on the pull, and they may not all arrive at the same spot. This isn’t good for Q resets, but it can isolate a key target.
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Some ‘smart’ players will be ready for the bind and will walk with Maiev; them being ready to move sometimes means they aren’t using some of their abilities (or waiting to use them after the snap) so not blinking/running acts as a pseudo-silence and Maiev can just attacks the enemies without forcing the Umbral tether.
Some of Maiev’s talents have a sort of anti-synergy to them and need different situations to get value of them; getting %hp damage from Sudden Vengeance is generally a different situation than getting %hp from Vengeful Knives; those are the more obvious examples, but that idea follows from pretty much all of her kit.
So it takes some practice to get a feel for the sort of combo you want to do, or map/team depending, and then getting the right talents to match accordingly.
Hit up the Try Me target dummies and get a feel for how that 1,2,3 list above affects the dummies on the various pulls to see which sort of combo/talent gets you more consistent damage spikes for how you want to play.
Some people really like the run-in and blink away, others prefer the blink in and run, and others like the chaotic risk of hostage taking and fingers-crossed cdr gambits.
Is E your escape, your engage, or your damage? While it could be more than 1 of those at select times, chances are it won’t be, so having the right use with the right talents makes a big difference on the sort of damage potential, or damage reality, that Maiev captures.