Final Fantasy XIV's Patch 6.5 "Growing Light" introduced a lot of new content, as well as one of the game's strangest bugs yet. Here's how it works and how you can make use of it!
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if Final Fantasy XIV's Black Mage had the spell speed buffs of an Astrologian? What if Red Mages could share their free instant casts with party members? What if you could just keep spamming your most powerful ability?
Well, wonder no more, because Patch 6.5 "Growing Light" seems to have (accidentally) made it a reality with a strange new bug, giving players in high-end raids random buffs at random times. And it's been causing all kinds of chaos.
Final Fantasy XIV Players Are Already Using This New Bug To Break Raids
Every Job in FF14 gives itself specific buffs at times that allows it to do what it does best, and usually these buffs aren't meant to be shared. For example, when a Machinist uses Reassemble, it's supposed to give them, and only them, a guaranteed Critical Hit on their next skill.
However, things aren't as clear-cut as of Patch 6.5. Now, when a full 8-man party attempts a Level 90 raid, there's a chance that the buff system might just, to put it mildly, completely fall apart.
Players can get random Job-specific buffs, not just from their Job, and not just from any Job in their party either, but from the entire Job roster in the game. And these buffs often don't behave like they're supposed to, with some having longer or shorter durations, becoming permanent or suddenly disappearing.
Whether this bug will help or hinder your progress is actually a bit of a coin flip. Some parties might get all their buffs shuffled around in a way that keeps most of them from actually doing their job. However, if you're lucky you might get something like, say, permanent Technical Step Ready on Dancer, turning you into the most powerful DPS in the game and letting you completely steamroll an otherwise challenging encounter.
Having a Dancer in your party seems to make the bug happen more often in general, so if you want to test it out yourself, bring a Dancer or two and hope for good RNG. As for why that is, or why the bug is even a thing in the first place, no one really seems to know for sure. Including the developers, if their radio silence on the issue is anything to go by.
A similar issue relating to buffs and debuffs in Final Fantasy XIV cropped up back in January of this year. Back then, World-First raiders of the new Ultimate encounter "The Omega Protocol" discovered that the sheer amount of boss-inflicted debuffs caused them to hit the cap on player statuses, making them miss out on their own buffs and severely nerfing their damage output. It's starting to seem like the game's buff system is in desperate need of an overhaul.
Maybe that overhaul will come with the game's next expansion, Dawntrail. Either way, if we find out any more details about this bug you'll be the first to know!