How to unlock Slaking
There is no direct purchase for Slaking. It appears on the Hoenn banner inside the 5★ pool. The 5★ band takes 1.5% of all pulls and holds 103 partners, so one specific Slaking works out to about 0.0146% per draw. The 70-pull pity counter guarantees a 5★, but it does not target Slaking specifically, so a guarantee can still resolve to another 5★. A duplicate Slaking refunds 300 coins at the 5★ rate.
Slaking stats and rank
The sheet lists Slaking at 138 HP, 120 speed, ×1.58 attack, ×1.58 physical and ×1.22 special, with 100 defense and 65 special defense — 670 base-stat total. On the three-stat percentile this is 94.3 out of 100, which puts Slaking at rank 4 of 966 and in tier S. Relative standing explains more than the total here: its strongest slot is physical multiplier (100th percentile) and its weakest is special defense (45th percentile), so it is a specialist rather than an all-rounder.
Best moves in Slaking's pool
At move level 5 the pool is led by Body Slam at 75.6 damage per 0.71s (167.6 effective DPS, ×1.58 multiplier), then Tackle at 33.6 damage per 0.38s (141.6 effective DPS, ×1.58 multiplier), then Quick Attack at 44.8 damage per 0.56s (125.8 effective DPS, ×1.58 multiplier). 5 of its 7 damaging moves scale with the physical multiplier and 2 with the special one, alongside 4 support moves. Its physical multiplier is the higher of the two (×1.58 against ×1.22), so physical moves convert better. The top option beats the second by 26.1 DPS, which decides slot one and leaves slot two as a judgement call.
Evolution cards for Slaking
Its starting move, Tackle, evolves into Take Down once the move is at level 5 and you hold the Vigor card, which boosts HP for that run. The permanent menu cannot substitute: only a Vigor card picked during the run unlocks the evolution. 7 of its 11 moves carry an evolution card, across 5 distinct cards (Vigor, Sprint, Power, Reflexes and Armor). The strongest of them is Body Slam at 167.6 effective DPS, so that is the one worth holding a card for first.
Slaking compared to similar partners
The two closest stat lines in the roster are Solgaleo (-6 HP, -1 speed, -0.13 attack, +10 total) and Urshifu (-23 HP, -1 speed, -0.16 attack, -120 total). Against Solgaleo, Slaking is 1 speed faster and Slaking hits harder by ×0.13, and the rank gap is 4 places. Every one of those numbers cuts both ways, so the decision is about which stat the run needs, so neither side is a strict upgrade and the move pools have to break the tie.