Nurse Joy, eat your heart out: Pokemon professor creates a ridiculous strategy to heal the maximum amount of health in a single turn by using a dizzying loop of ejector seats
And you thought gym leaders spamming potions was bad
Pokemon battles are generally all about dealing as much damage as possible, and maybe that's why I'd never given much thought to how much damage you could possibly heal on a single turn, but it turns out that it's way more than you might expect.
In a new deep-dive video on YouTube, content creator King The Luck proves that you can go far beyond healing a single health bar's worth of hit points if you're smart enough, by depleting and replenishing it repeatedly. First though, you'll need a loyal Blissey – a cute, pink Normal-type that just so happens to have the largest possible pool of health at 714HP, and must unfortunately have several near-death experiences for this to work.
King The Luck's optimal plan calls for a Double Battle format. On their team, as well as the Blissey, which has already been brought down to 1HP, they have three Smeargles – two set up Healing Wish and Lunar Dance to fully heal whichever ailing Pokemon gets switched into the right side of the field. The third Smeargle uses Metal Sound to cause a stat drop on Blissey, and then Role Play to copy the Hospitality ability from an opposing Sinistcha, which heals ally Pokemon by 25% when it's switched in.
The opposing team also has a Smeargle, and both sides must use the move Sticky Web to lower the speed of any Pokemon switched in. Then, the final stages of setup see the enemy Smeargle use Doom Desire to essentially schedule some damage, while King The Luck's own Smeargle uses Wish to grant a heal at the end of the following turn.
After that, the chaos begins. King The Luck's Smeargle uses Ally Switch to swap places with the almost-dead Blissey, triggering Healing Wish. Then, the opposing Sinistcha brings Blissey back down to 2HP using the move Leaf Storm, but because Sinistcha is holding an Eject Pack, the debuff it receives from its attack switches it out, and into a Galarian Weezing. Weezing's ability, Neutralizing Gas, which is meant to nullify abilities, sort of has the opposite effect here, as after the Sticky Web forces it to switch out thanks to its own Eject Pack, the gas wears off, causing the Smeargle's Hospitality to heal Blissey by 25%. Weezing is switched into another Weezing with the exact same setup. And then another… and another, repeating the process until Blissey is back to full health.
After using Trick to get an Eject Button from the enemy Smeargle, Blissey is hit with a Stomp to go back down to 2HP, causing its new item to switch it out. In comes a Magikarp, holding yet another Eject Pack, so the Sticky Web immediately makes it swap again with Blissey, healing the pink blob with Lunar Dance when it comes back in. At this point, Doom Desire activates to damage Blissey, so that it can then be healed by the Wish for a final chunk of health.
In total, this heals a grand total of 2,294HP in a single turn, which is absolutely ridiculous, and seriously impressive. I'm just glad no gym leaders are able to heal this much – even if the Johto region's Whitney feels like she comes pretty close with that dang Miltank.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Be sure to check out our list of the best Pokemon games to see where your favorite ranks.
I'm one of GamesRadar+'s news writers, who works alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.