Improving my BH

[Miretar]

I am trying to advance beyond lvl 108 in the trials. Killing Elban at that lvl is pure torture: I am simply not doing enough damage. I have been doing some crafting with little to show for it. In over 30 attempts to make a better Malice, I have not been able to create one over 74. Crafting bracers, belts & charms has been hell. Before I make anymore weapons & armor or do any enchanting I thought I would get some advice.

i have 4 celestial to use and 14 piece of perfect rare jewelry and 25 glory. I won’t be playing in the gold event.
I figure that I need to complete overhaul all weapons armor & jewelry. Right now the Stalker suit pieces range between lvl 73-76.
Total Stalker armor stats:
572 AbR
1337 CR
667.9 CD
228 Power
plus a good mix of power, vitality, haste & life on Hit
Trinket: Life on Hit, 21 Phys Dmg, 126 CR, 72.4 CD
Qol: 523 Life, 130 CR, 84.5 CD, 22.3 Nat Dmg

Belt: 202 Armor, 16.7 Nat 65.1 CD 96 CR

[Ozymandius]

I am trying to advance beyond lvl 108 in the trials. Killing Elban at that lvl is pure torture: I am simply not doing enough damage. I have been doing some crafting with little to show for it. In over 30 attempts to make a better Malice, I have not been able to create one over 74. Crafting bracers, belts & charms has been hell. Before I make anymore weapons & armor or do any enchanting I thought I would get some advice.

i have 4 celestial to use and 14 piece of perfect rare jewelry and 25 glory. I won’t be playing in the gold event.

You should plan to participate in the Gold event, and here is why:

1. Your weapon damage is too low to push higher trials; that is why you are struggling to kill the bosses. The cheapest place to craft weapons is during an ANB event, so that is your first reason for playing the event. Even if you don't craft a better weapon, you might get some drops of the newly released gear that are worth keeping.

2. Your CL is still low enough to benefit from the XP that your event hero will earn, especially if you craft XP on all of your gear along the way. The extra CL earned from the event will help to push you past your current plateau, even if you do not manage to craft better weapons.

3. The ANB event will likely offer some of the new Glory currency that you can use to unlock crafting recipes for the gear that you want to try. Until you have all of those recipes unlocked, I do not see how you can consider bypassing a free event like ANB.

Aside from weapon damage, your build looks pretty good, but you do not share what abilities that you are using. For a 6 pc Stalker you should have Shadow Assassins pistol set with Lethal Shot as primary attack. Since you have Charm of Qol, you will also get some damage from secondary attack, so I would add explosive shot in that slot. Your primary abilities should be Rapid Fire, Snipe, and Smoke Screen which should be deployed as Smoke Screen (30% increased damage for 5 seconds), then Rapid Fire (damage increased by 350% and CD increased by 200% for 3 seconds), and finally Snipe which will also trigger Poison Cloud. Then circle around and repeat. If yo have healers Eileen & Maggie, you can increase your effect by using Vortex to bunch up the mob just before you deploy your major attack skills. You passive abilities must have Poisoned Ammo with Piercing Ammo and Pathfinder [some BHs use celerity or intense training, but with your current Haste and Ability Rates that would be a waste].

My Stalker BH currently is using Charm of Qol with Talisman of Storms both with Physical Damage to boost your Snipe attacks. I also have a Bracer of Mastery that boosts Lethal Shot damage and a Molten Belt. If you only make one Glory purchase, I would open the Molten Belt recipe. That alone will cut down your boss fights by boosting your damage, but you will need to swap out Tracer Ammo instead of Piercing Ammo and swap Explosive Ammo into the primary attack slot since Molten Armor requires both of those to stack infinitely.

[Calin Chc]

"so I would add explosive shot in that slot, especially if you have fire damage on any of your gear"

Why would you mention having fire damage? All the damage done by this stalker build is nature(poison) or physical(lethal shot, explosive shot, snipe). Am I missing something? Is tracer ammo doing fire damage(description only mentions increase vulnerability to explosives, but not the damage type like is mentioned for poison ammo).

[Ozymandius]

You are correct most of the damage in a Stalker BH is Physical Damage. Since the changeover, I mostly played Havoc/Demolitionist BH which uses Heatseekers and Magnetic Trap, so I probably just transferred some Fire Damage trinkets over to the Stalker without rechecking. Thanks for the correction; I switched over to including Physical Damage on both trinkets and belt for the Stalker. You still need the Explosive Shot and Tracer Ammo if using Molten Belt, but for that build I would switch Explosive Shot to primary attack.