[overview]
**Draft Order**: Round 7 onward
**Price Range**: 1 point
**Overview**: Slaking is a theorist's Pokemon, fascinating on paper yet impracticable in practice. Slaking has little to bring to the table positively when burdened with the cement shoes that Truant is for it. Being unable to use a move half the time Slaking is on the field leaves it with the terrible choice of either staying in until the bell rings or demanding careful support to ensure it can play hit-and-run games throughout the game. This turns Slaking into a huge momentum sink, necessitating major support, and even a well-supported Slaking gives its opponents many turns to set hazards or position sweepers.
[strategy comments]
Common Roles
========
**Hit-and-Run Wallbreaker**: Unable to act every other turn, Slaking is more than capable of switching out during its downtime turns. Slaking can come into the battle, fire off a powerful move, and then switch out immediately after. This minimizes the main drawback of Truant, but limits Slaking's impact on the game and can let an opponent to grab momentum during switching turns.
Common Moves
========
**Primary STAB Moves**: Body Slam, Double-Edge, Giga Impact
**Setup Moves**: Slaking should not rely on setup moves, as the opportunity cost for turns is too high to justify boosting.
**Utility Moves**: Brick Break, Thunder Wave, Encore, Roar, Yawn
**Coverage**: Drain Punch, Earthquake, Fire Punch, Gunk Shot, Hammer Arm, Heavy Slam, Ice Punch, Knock Off, Play Rough, Rock Slide, Seed Bomb, Shadow Claw, Sucker Punch, Wild Charge, X-Scissor, Zen Headbutt
Niche Moves
========
**Slack Off**: Slaking has reliable healing in Slack Off, but must be able to heal two turns' worth of damage on average in order to justify spending precious turns using it.
**Facade**: If Slaking can reliably expect to be hit with a status condition, Facade can outdamage everything but Giga Impact.
Common Items
========
**Choice Band**: Slaking's main objective is to deal damage. With a reliance on a shallow set of STAB options and the preference to switch out often, Choice Band is a way to boost Slaking's damage that does not provide a dramatically negative side effect.
**Choice Scarf**: With a once-outstanding base 100 Speed, Choice Scarf Slaking can outspeed any unboosted Pokemon not named Regieleki. With satisfactory native power, a faster Slaking can pick up KOs without needing to take a hit first.
**Heavy-Duty Boots**: With how often Slaking benefits from switching out after acting, Heavy-Duty Boots enables it to worry less about entry hazards affecting its gameplan, which eases some of the overwhelming need for team support that Slaking requires.
Niche Items
========
**Chople Berry**: With a single weakness to Fighting, Slaking can use Chople Berry to take a hit from Pokemon like Iron Valiant that it wouldn't naturally, allowing it to take out a high-value target with its own attack.
**Eject Pack**: When coupled with Hammer Arm, Slaking can switch out immediately on attacking, preserving momentum. This works particularly well if the opponent's response to Slaking is a resistance rather than an immunity, hitting Steel- and Rock-types hard and bringing in a teammate that threatens them.
Tera
========
Slaking can juice a touch more power out of Terastallization if provided the access to it, using it to power up a coverage needed to overcome a check or to further enhance its Normal-type STAB. However, Slaking is not a particularly positive user of Terastallization and will often make way for better Tera Captains should it be paired with a high-cost partner captain. Defensively, Slaking gains nothing from Tera, as foes can easily check it when it is forced to idle the next turn.
Draft Strategy
========
Slaking greatly appreciates solid team support but can rarely justify being provided it. Some things may come easily by way of good drafting, but for a cheap Pokemon picked up at the end and unlikely to be brought to many, if any, games, Slaking should not be built around and only seriously considered if a team can natively support it and if that team needs the threat of powerful physical hits.
**Pivoting**: Pokemon like Tentacruel, Uxie, and Iron Hands can ease Slaking's ability to enter the battlefield. The slower a pivot, the more likely it is that Slaking can avoid losing HP just on entry, keeping it alive for longer.
Checks and Counters
========
**Protect**: A single move undoes everything that Slaking wishes to accomplish, turning it from a potential threat to entirely disarmed. By using Protect on any turn that Slaking can take action, an opposing Pokemon can ensure that Slaking can make no progress.
**Physical Walls**: Slaking's great power may have been serviceable years ago, but many physical walls nowadays can stomach even its strongest hits easily. Corviknight, Dondozo, or other similar walls can easily switch in on any hit that Slaking throws out, some not even needing to use the Truant downtime to heal up.
**Steel- and Ghost-types**: With a handful of coverage exceptions, Slaking has no way to reliably hit any Steel- and Ghost-types that don't take any damage of note from Slaking's STAB hits. Attempting to predict their switch-ins with the use of coverage like Earthquake or Knock Off can be incredibly punishing if the prediction goes wrong, forcing Slaking off the field without having accomplished anything.
[credits]
Written by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/a-fairy.57965/
Quality checked by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/techno.527276/
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/scionicle.599989/
Grammar checked by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/sunny004.197240/
**Draft Order**: Round 7 onward
**Price Range**: 1 point
**Overview**: Slaking is a theorist's Pokemon, fascinating on paper yet impracticable in practice. Slaking has little to bring to the table positively when burdened with the cement shoes that Truant is for it. Being unable to use a move half the time Slaking is on the field leaves it with the terrible choice of either staying in until the bell rings or demanding careful support to ensure it can play hit-and-run games throughout the game. This turns Slaking into a huge momentum sink, necessitating major support, and even a well-supported Slaking gives its opponents many turns to set hazards or position sweepers.
[strategy comments]
Common Roles
========
**Hit-and-Run Wallbreaker**: Unable to act every other turn, Slaking is more than capable of switching out during its downtime turns. Slaking can come into the battle, fire off a powerful move, and then switch out immediately after. This minimizes the main drawback of Truant, but limits Slaking's impact on the game and can let an opponent to grab momentum during switching turns.
Common Moves
========
**Primary STAB Moves**: Body Slam, Double-Edge, Giga Impact
**Setup Moves**: Slaking should not rely on setup moves, as the opportunity cost for turns is too high to justify boosting.
**Utility Moves**: Brick Break, Thunder Wave, Encore, Roar, Yawn
**Coverage**: Drain Punch, Earthquake, Fire Punch, Gunk Shot, Hammer Arm, Heavy Slam, Ice Punch, Knock Off, Play Rough, Rock Slide, Seed Bomb, Shadow Claw, Sucker Punch, Wild Charge, X-Scissor, Zen Headbutt
Niche Moves
========
**Slack Off**: Slaking has reliable healing in Slack Off, but must be able to heal two turns' worth of damage on average in order to justify spending precious turns using it.
**Facade**: If Slaking can reliably expect to be hit with a status condition, Facade can outdamage everything but Giga Impact.
Common Items
========
**Choice Band**: Slaking's main objective is to deal damage. With a reliance on a shallow set of STAB options and the preference to switch out often, Choice Band is a way to boost Slaking's damage that does not provide a dramatically negative side effect.
**Choice Scarf**: With a once-outstanding base 100 Speed, Choice Scarf Slaking can outspeed any unboosted Pokemon not named Regieleki. With satisfactory native power, a faster Slaking can pick up KOs without needing to take a hit first.
**Heavy-Duty Boots**: With how often Slaking benefits from switching out after acting, Heavy-Duty Boots enables it to worry less about entry hazards affecting its gameplan, which eases some of the overwhelming need for team support that Slaking requires.
Niche Items
========
**Chople Berry**: With a single weakness to Fighting, Slaking can use Chople Berry to take a hit from Pokemon like Iron Valiant that it wouldn't naturally, allowing it to take out a high-value target with its own attack.
**Eject Pack**: When coupled with Hammer Arm, Slaking can switch out immediately on attacking, preserving momentum. This works particularly well if the opponent's response to Slaking is a resistance rather than an immunity, hitting Steel- and Rock-types hard and bringing in a teammate that threatens them.
Tera
========
Slaking can juice a touch more power out of Terastallization if provided the access to it, using it to power up a coverage needed to overcome a check or to further enhance its Normal-type STAB. However, Slaking is not a particularly positive user of Terastallization and will often make way for better Tera Captains should it be paired with a high-cost partner captain. Defensively, Slaking gains nothing from Tera, as foes can easily check it when it is forced to idle the next turn.
Draft Strategy
========
Slaking greatly appreciates solid team support but can rarely justify being provided it. Some things may come easily by way of good drafting, but for a cheap Pokemon picked up at the end and unlikely to be brought to many, if any, games, Slaking should not be built around and only seriously considered if a team can natively support it and if that team needs the threat of powerful physical hits.
**Pivoting**: Pokemon like Tentacruel, Uxie, and Iron Hands can ease Slaking's ability to enter the battlefield. The slower a pivot, the more likely it is that Slaking can avoid losing HP just on entry, keeping it alive for longer.
Checks and Counters
========
**Protect**: A single move undoes everything that Slaking wishes to accomplish, turning it from a potential threat to entirely disarmed. By using Protect on any turn that Slaking can take action, an opposing Pokemon can ensure that Slaking can make no progress.
**Physical Walls**: Slaking's great power may have been serviceable years ago, but many physical walls nowadays can stomach even its strongest hits easily. Corviknight, Dondozo, or other similar walls can easily switch in on any hit that Slaking throws out, some not even needing to use the Truant downtime to heal up.
**Steel- and Ghost-types**: With a handful of coverage exceptions, Slaking has no way to reliably hit any Steel- and Ghost-types that don't take any damage of note from Slaking's STAB hits. Attempting to predict their switch-ins with the use of coverage like Earthquake or Knock Off can be incredibly punishing if the prediction goes wrong, forcing Slaking off the field without having accomplished anything.
[credits]
Written by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/a-fairy.57965/
Quality checked by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/techno.527276/
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/scionicle.599989/
Grammar checked by:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/members/sunny004.197240/
Last edited:
