We're just under one week from the launch of Path of Exile: Scourge and have been closely monitoring feedback ever since. We've deployed a number of hotfixes including the most recent 3.16.0b patch and wanted to let you know what else was on our radar.

Here are the patches so far:

3.16.0 Hotfix 1
3.16.0 Hotfix 2
3.16.0 Hotfix 3
3.16.0 Hotfix 4
3.16.0 Hotfix 5
Our 3.16.0b patch was released yesterday and it includes a variety of improvements to Scourge monster damage as well as fixes to a variety of bugs.

Scourge Improvements

• Upon encountering a Boss in Nightmare, the drain of blood from the Crucible is now paused for 5 seconds.
• The Tainted Mythic Orb can now unpredictably upgrade Corrupted items to Unique items even if their item level is lower than when it would normally be able to drop. Prior to this change, the orb would fail to apply to the item if there were no valid Unique items to upgrade to.
• The damage of Ravenous Bloodshaper's Blood Orb and Spike Barrage skills has been decreased.
• The damage of Demon Herder's Vomit and Beam skill has been decreased.
• Reduced the number of Monsters with Proximity Shield that can spawn in some Scourge encounters.
• The Corruption Absorbed progress bar now displays underneath items stored in the Blood Crucible, without you having to hover over them.

Other Improvements

• The damage of Baranite Thaumaturge's ground explosions has been decreased. This change does not affect Baranite Thaumaturge Spectres.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where Item Filters would incorrectly assign Weapons and Jewellery a BaseDefencePercentile value of 0 rather than 100.
• Fixed a bug where the colour of sockets on the Skin of the Loyal Unique could be modified.
• Fixed a bug where Zana's Fortune Favours the Brave Map Device option would fail to open a Map.
• Fixed a bug where Watchstones could sometimes fail to drop from a Conqueror's Citadel.
• Fixed a bug where it was not possible to open portals to a Betrayal Safehouse or the Temple of Atzoatl from within a Guild Hideout.
• Fixed a bug where the "20% chance to Avoid being Stunned" Resistance and Ailment Protection Mastery was not granting Stun Avoidance.
• Fixed a bug where some Redeemer Influence Amulet Modifiers were providing reduced Mana Reservation Efficiency instead of increased. This fix applies to existing items.
• Fixed a bug where the Guardian's Challenge Divination Card sold by Zana did not have a price.
• Fixed a bug where Mansion Contracts sold by Whakano did not have a price.
• Fixed a client crash that occur when using Spectral Shield Throw with Vanishing Dyeapplied to an equipped Shield.
• Fixed a client crash that could occur with the Automaton Divine Ire Skill Effect Microtransaction.
• Fixed a common client crash.
• Fixed two instance crashes.

There are a variety of other topics that we would like to talk about that we have listed below.

Standard Map conversion
Currently, if you have maps in your old tab that, upon upgrading, turn into another map that you don't have enough room for, the entire tab upgrade fails. We will improve this system so that overflowed maps are given to you in a remove-only tab. This will mean the rest of the conversion will work as intended. We can't give a specific timeline on this just yet but it's a priority to resolve this before 3.17 launches and hopefully much sooner than that.

Ballista Totems
There is a bug where Ballistas used via Totem Support only have -45% damage taken instead of -80%. This will be fixed in an upcoming patch.

Elemental Overload
There is an issue where Traps, Mines and Totems currently have no way to take advantage of Elemental Overload. Also, Cremation currently doesn't activate Elemental Overload. We have a change for this on the way. Separately, there is another issue where Elemental Overload is not reflected on the tooltip for DPS. This will also be fixed.

Scourge Feedback
We've been monitoring all feedback related to Scourge and have a few improvements coming which we will outline below. We are aware that the bulk of players' feedback around Scourge revolves around the rewards it provides. We don't have any updates to provide regarding this but we are reviewing the feedback and discussing it.

Some players have reported that it's not obvious enough when the Blood Crucible is full. We're making both the sound effect and visual effect more obvious to help with this.

We're looking at updating two of the possible Scourge Map modifiers, specifically the "Only Shift into Nightmare on Killing a Rare or Unique Enemy" and "Shift on reaching Full Resource, Killing Enemies Drain Resource" modifiers. The former modifier implies that it is activated on every Rare or Unique kill, and will have its description updated as well as being changed to activate more frequently. The latter modifiers will be modified so that there is a slow Scourge Blood drain over time, so that there is still some time pressure for finding bosses while having a lower Blood drain from kills.

Missing Patch Notes
In our 3.16.0 Patch Notes, we unfortunately missed two notes: one related to armour-based shields and one related to the Veiled Modifier Damage Over Time Multiplier Bow Craft.

Here is the missing patch note for armour-based shields.

Problem:
Tower Shields provide significantly more armour than the armour/evasion of other shield types, making them a no-brainer for non-crit Shield builds.

Solutions:
Reduced the armour provided by the top end shields, but raised the average defence of other shields so the difference in base defences isn't as extreme. Skills that scale off these stats will be rebalanced to account for these changes.

Here is the missing patch note for the bow craft.

Quivers now have additional tiers of Damage Over Time Multiplier. In order to be consistent with other item slots, bows now use one-hand Damage Over Time Multiplier values.

We apologise that these patch notes were missed. We'll continue monitoring feedback around Path of Exile: Scourge and making adjustments where appropriate. Thanks so much for all of your support and feedback!