I've tried it before and a hit from Slaking's Hyper Beam is only enough to remove 50% from a Gyarados or Blastoise's HP bar, or cripple very weak Dragonites. It is unable to kill the pokemon instantly which is what i expected. The only reason that i used it for attacking is for the lulz or when i see really weak pokemon in a gym.
Seems like it's only purpose is to scare newbs from attacking gyms or fix kill a machamp from a player who does not know how to dodge. (It's attacks do huge amounts of damage even when dodged however, especially hyper beam.)
Yes, you are correct. Crappy attacker.
As a defender, it had two advantages.
First, with it's huge bulk, it's slower to kill than most mons.
Second, with it's huge CP, it'll keep that tower tall longer than any other mon in the game, so if folks are scanning for short towers to attack, you won't be one.
Slightly better defensive stats than vaporeon but sharing the same fighting weakness as blissey/chansey/snorlax i’d Say it’s defensive role is questionable. I’ve never felt slaking Beeing a timing out issue. Even preferring gyms with slaking. a vaporeon equals one slot for grass/electric attacker.
Just my thoughts though.
I'm not doubting your reference, but in my experience, Slaking is incredibly quick to defeat with Machamp. If it's got a one-bar move, it's often out of the way before it can even fire it. I salivate every time I see one because I know it's going quick.
ETA: Upon reread, you did say "optimal counter," which I missed the first time. Those are a bit slower, but my salivating stands. :)
Just like i said, they were ruined by joke movesets; Salamence with Hydro Pump, Milotic learning Hyper Beam and not another water move like Hydro Pump or Metagross not learning meteor mash/Blaziken not getting Hi Jump Kick is a joke. False diversity exchanged with pure weakness. And please don't remind me about Rayquaza's moveset.
But the problem is some of these gen iii pokemon has at least 2 ruining moves, like say Sceptile and Salamence while their movepool provides many unused moves that could be better than those moves if they actually implemented them.
Dragonite has 2 usable movepools excluding legacy, Tyranitar has again 2 usable movepools (It has 2 viable defensive combinations but Tyranitar itself is Not viable for defense anyway) but these gen iii guys are basically learning so much "diverse" moves that only like 1 of them can actually do something and it's usually not the options to make the pokemon "diverse".
It's the movepool that makes the seemingly viable pool of pokemon inferior. And i'm only counting Sceptile, Blaziken, Milotic, Walrein, Absol, Wailord, Salamence, Metagross, Regice, Regirock and Rayquaza. Rest for me don't have much problems (Hariyama, Kyogre etc.) or are too weak to rate (Swampert, Altaria, Flygon etc).
Sceptile - Top 2 grass pokemon in the game, has amazing moveset.
Blaziken - Made mediocre by moveset.
Milotic - Doesn't have the stats to be a good attacker. Has multiple movesets that are great for defense.
Walrein - Has good attacking moveset.
Absol - Has good attacking moveset but stats are so-so.
Salamence - Has good attacking moveset, too bad it's not great.
Metagross - Is the best steel type by a wide margin even with the mediocre moveset.
Regice - Doesn't have the stats to be good, has a good moveset.
Regirock - Doesn't have the stats to be good, has a good moveset.
Rayquaza - Has amazing moveset for one type and is top of type attacker even with the other not-so-good moveset.
Out of 11 pokemon you mentioned, only one can be argued to be ruined by its movepool.
