Make Wish Viable

remove the requirement of being hit for the healing to activate, have it on a timer instead. wish has a lot of potential as a healing move since it is the only one that can heal pokemon in other slots on your team. the issue is it will usually get you killed if you rely on it as it currently is.
the reason it will kill you, is that you need to be hit for the healing to take affect. this means you cannot control how much you heal. like at all. since if you use wish before you get in a fight you will gain hp while running in, and then when hit you will only gain back the hp of that one hit (since you will be close to full anyways). and if you use it when low you either will die cause you wasted a move use during combat, or it won’t activate until you have already healed from running.

to fix this, I recommend removing the “needs to take a hit” requirement in favor of a timer. this is entirely feasible; safeguard, reflect, and light screen all have timers tied to them that scale to the user’s level (higher level, longer screens) and when their timer runs out an event triggers where the effect fades. so you could just duplicate the timer without the level correlation, or invert it so that it’d be longer the lower the level, and apply it to wish. so in effect when you would use wish, it adds the wish status and starts a timer, when the timer runs out the status is removed and the healing is applied. the scaling with level isn’t required, it would just make it more interesting, and fit better with the moves that add a status to the player that are already there.

so why would this be worth the time of day to change you ask? well as it is right now, if you want to heal without items or belly use you need to have a move slot taken up with a healing move. on every pokemon on your team. the only exception to this is the moves morning sun and moon light. these two heal both the pokemon using it, and any friendly pokemon nearby. but it doesn’t heal any non-active pokemon, so you still need a healing move on each pokemon. unless you want to rely on someone else to heal you.
wish has the potential to fill this niche, and in fact looks like that was what it was originally designed to do seeing as the status for wish affects the active pokemon regardless of which one uses it. It would allow players to free up move slots on their fighters allowing people to use status/janky moves without increasing their dependence on pp restoring items for the damaging/sane moves (example: my flygon has roost outrage earthquake and dragon dance, I would use a lot less ethers if I ran the standard rock slide instead of dragon dance since between outrage and earthquake the flygon has only 32 pp on damaging moves).

but wish isn’t on many pokemon you say?
here is the list of pokemon that have access to wish in gen 7 (the gen that pmu’s movelists come from):wishMons
and here is a list of the pokemon that have access to morning sun in gen 7:sunMons
morning sun is used a lot. I see no issue with the number of pokemon that this affects.

I think that changing wish to being on a timer rather than happening when the player is hit not only makes sense gameplay-wise, but also thematically. wish in the main series games is on a timer. you use it one turn and then the next (regardless of what the opponent does) it heals you. so in my opinion, forcing you to take a hit to heal is not an accurate representation of the move.

as for how it would change the pmu meta, I think it could become a support staple. it opens so many options, and adds another trade off to consider when picking a support pokemon (there aren’t nearly enough trade offs. there is next to no difference between me using corsola or pyukumuku) so we could expect more diversity in the team construction people use. maybe even inciting people to coordinate with a party member who brings what support moves.

it has its niche, it just needs to be good enough to take benefit of it.

those are my points. please consider updating the move wish.

(image source: Pokémon Search - veekun)

To be honest, I never have seen this problem and when I do use Wish I and it doesn’t heal I thought that was how it worked (ya know cause its called wish and wishes don’t always come true), Tho I will say I have never used Wish in any main games so I still don’t know what you’re talking about

If I recall, moves like Reflect, Protect, Safeguard etc do not have timers, it’s all based on ‘Turns’ aka Hits or Using Moves depending what it is.
Sleep for example is ‘Move use’ form of Turns.
Lightscreen/Reflect etc has a preset number, boosted by Soft Clay if a user has one.
Or Protect is how many hits before it wears off etc.
Many volatile status condition work this way, Wish being one of them currently.
There is no difference on the amount of Hits/Turns, regarding a Pokemon’s level.
Timers might be possible, since they are used for wind, but I dunno if it would be the right way forward or not, since we’d need to find a timer thats balanced for the move instead.


This Is always an option. It may not be Ideal but at least It’s always active and boosted HP recovery rate Is pretty nice. Once you use It, It’s active the whole floor perhaps? Or maybe wears off after a certain number of hits received. Either way, I think this Is the best solution personally, If Wish were to get changed.

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I like the idea of it increasing HP Regen whilst active, not sure for how long though, depending on how long probably would affect it’s PP.

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I like the over time hp regen idea. it gives it a unique use (doesn’t make as much thematic sense, but gameplay comes first).

not sure how much pp wish has to start with, with sensing hat on gardevoir it had 18 iirc, so I want to say it’s base is 15 (I’m probably wrong on that). you can cover 30 floors with all the pp from light screen/reflect (usually, never had them run out even without light clay except when training level 15s) and safeguard you can cover for 40 floors. so having it last the whole floor wouldn’t be out of proportion to the other moves designed to keep you alive, so I think per floor is a good idea.

the other question I want to bring up is what will it affect? just the active pokemon? the user’s team of 1-4 pokemon? the active pokemon in a range? or all friendly pokemon in a range regardless of which are active?
I think it should be the last one, but with only the range of refresh(1radius aoe) or with it’s current range (0tile aoe). since then it’s harder to try and catch people running off and give them the status. they’d have to huddle around like a cult ritual to get the bonus, and I think that helps with the theme. it also doesn’t remove wish’s niche as the only full team healing move.

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It’s 20. For Light Screen It’s 30, so I assume Reflect’s Is also 30.


As seen here and the screenshot In my first reply, they would technically be lasting the same amount of time In PMU.

the other question I want to bring up is what will it affect? just the active pokemon? the user’s team of 1-4 pokemon? the active pokemon in a range? or all friendly pokemon in a range regardless of which are active?
I think it should be the last one, but with only the range of refresh(1radius aoe) or with it’s current range (0tile aoe). since then it’s harder to try and catch people running off and give them the status.

1 tile AOE Is ok, but I think “0” tile works best–aka party members get the effect If you stand on them and use It–since I don’t think Wish affects your team mates In PMD. If It should affect the whole team when applied Is debatable. It’d make more sense If It didn’t but If It did It wouldn’t hurt especially since Wish right now does apply to your whole team.

they’d have to huddle around like a cult ritual to get the bonus

lol

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