No, the only real solution is to add abilities. Slaking is not the only issue out of the gen 3 Pokemon. Just look at Castform, Kecleon, and most importantly Shedinja. Abilities are the most important aspects of these Pokemon. What is the point of Castform without forecast? Kecleon without color change? and most importantly Shedinja without its wonder guard? Shedinja will just die instantly as soon as it gets sent out in battle since it only has 1 hp. All of these Pokemon are known for their abilities, including Slaking. Adding abilities, or at least something along the lines of them, is the only real way to solve this problem.
GamePress
How about this: Slaking only in defense
Cannot use him to attack (gym or raid).
No need to change anything about his stats.
Give him Confusion and Body Slam. Or Dazzling Gleam. He's still not gonna be as bulky as Blissey but will roar against Machamp and you need Mewtwo to beat him 1v1.
Gym needs to be more difficult!
Report
Answers
Giving shedinja its ability would kind of just create the opposite problem, what would be stopping him from soloing gyms, or perhaps even raids, where the mons it fights don't possess an SE move? I feel like it would have to be redesigned as a more traditional glass-cannon.
The other three seem a bit more workable to me. With Kecleon and Castform make them sort of similar to Ditto in that their quick moves function like their abilities, Castform becomes the first mon with the weather moves as its fast movepool and change its moveset to that type of damaging move once it tranforms, Kecleon copies the opponents type with its first quick move then it becomes some other damaging move for the rest of the fight. Slaking is trickier, but I feel like they could just make all his moves twice as slow as the slowest available, or have his only possible quick move be slow and non-damaging but still charge his energy bar.
I would honestly prefer some half-measure like these over introducing abilities that would randomly be assigned to all of our existing mons as well, and the inevitable introduction thereafter of ability swapping items similar to the TMs for mons with more than one possible ability, it's tough enough to find TMs as rewards without over-diluting the reward pool.
