Introduction: Slaking is a pokemon that is blessed with Uber-like stats; his total base is 670, placing it at the same level as Kyogre and Groudon, and higher than every OU pokemon in the game. However, he is cursed by one of the worst abilities in the game, Truant. Under Truant, Slaking only can attack once every two turns. This is the main reason he is not seen very much, if at all in OU play. You can find the official Smogon analysis of Slaking here:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22387
The Idea: Beez and I found the smogon Slaking analysis lacking to say the least; there had to be another use for it. Among the greatest threats in the current D/P metagame are the stable of dragons: Garchomp, Salamence, Dragonite and (even though he is not dragon-type), Gyarados. These four pokemon give everyone problems when making a competitive team. They all have great stats, and have access to at least one of the super-powerful Outrage, Draco Meteor or Dragon Dance. To our understanding there wasn’t anything in our current metagame to be able to counter effectively all variants of these monsters. Until...
SlaKing Arthur the Dragon Slayer
Adamant @Choice Scarf
EVs: 252 HP, 52 Att., 200 Spec. Def. (props to Bologo)
- Ice Punch
- Thunderpunch
- Return
- Pursuit
Since Slaking pretty much can only attack once efficiently then must switch out, he is a perfect candidate for a choice item. In this case, Choice Scarf magnifies his already brilliant 100 base speed stat and allows him to outspeed most threats. Adamant Nature, 252 hp Evs, 200 spec def evs allows him to survive a Choice Specs Salamence Draco Meteor 100% of the time. Slaking can outspeed any non-Choice Scarf Garchomp, Gyarados, Salamence or Dragonite, among others.
Ice Punch is the main attack for this monster. Even though he is not running a +Att nature, he still has enough power to safely OHKO all standard variants of Garchomp, Salamence and Dragonite. Many people are not aware of this, and this adds to the effectiveness of the set.
Thunderpunch with Stealth Rock, OHKOs BulkyGyarados…, OHKOs all non-Bulky variants.
Return is Slaking’s strongest move on this set. That being said, Return is better used to finish off weakened opponents other than the aforementioned dragons, due to the unfortunate characteristics of Truant.
Pursuit is a nice final option to hit pokemon switching out of Slaking. It is also a great weapon to use against switching (or even non-switching) Gengar and Cresselia, as well as a nice option to revenge kill.
Final Notes and Explanations: Both Beez and I have used a team containing this slaking for about 35-40 matches and it has performed better than we could have imagined. Most people see slaking and have no idea what to do; people think because of truant they can take whatever Slaking can throw at them and get an extra turn to set-up. This is especially true of DDing pokemon. If Ice Punch/Thunderpunch had not already been revealed, not
one person switched out their Gyarados/Mence/Dragonite/Garchomp vs. Slaking. We both have Wish support on our teams and this helps recover some of the residual damage from Stealth Rock/Spikes and the like. Perhaps the only problem with this set effectively countering all of the dragons would be a late game SpecsMence sweeper with Stealth Rock support, which would make surving a Draco Meteor iffy. Thank you very much for reading this set proposal idea, especially since it was a bit long. Beez and I worked together so the credit (and especially the discredit or flames) is both of ours.
In the following post Beez will post the accompanying damage calculations.