The Slakoth Community Day that Really Slacked Off

I’m not sure why Niantic decided to choose Slakoth for June’s Community Day. There’s not a lot of reasons I can think of why it was picked, but I can think of plenty of reasons why it wasn’t a good choice.

I suppose it fits the criteria for a Community Day Pokemon. A three-stage Pokemon with a cute basic form and a monstrous final evolution and a second evolution that no one cares about, capable of having a somewhat signature move, having some sort of use somewhere and tends to only come from 10km eggs, while being insanely rare in the wild. Slakoth meets those criteria. Slakoth is small and somewhat cute and lazy. No one cares about Vigoroth. Slaking now has its own Community Day move (Body Slam) and has a use in being a massive wall of health with high defence that delays the inevitable.

But the thing is, no one… really cares.

And I can tell how no one cares because there were SO FEW PEOPLE around for June’s Community Day. There was me, brother, local Pokenerd who knows everything, two regulars who quickly gave up and went home to spoof some Pokemon, a guy I like, a guy on a scooter and a tourist on the last day of his holiday. A grand total of eight people. Three of whom left after the first hour. All of whom were just as interested in the Cresselia raid which opened right at the start of the Community Day.

That Cresselia raid was great though, because it got me my first shiny of the day. I caught a shiny Cresselia with 93% IVs. It’s so pretty. I’m actually amazed because I’ve done about 20-30 Cresselia raids so far and came up empty. Unfortunately, said shiny Cresselia managed to offset the rest of my luck, as it took 45 minutes to catch my first shiny Slakoth. I only actually managed to catch 3 shiny Slakoths in total, enough to have one of each evolution.

But the thing is, the evolutions are… kinda mediocre. Shiny Slakoth is great, it’s cute and pink. Shiny Vigoroth is okay because it’s got that differently coloured neck piece and is more yellow. Shiny Slaking… is barely noticeable! And Slaking is the most important one because that’s what most people will see!

It doesn’t help that Slaking’s attacks are shit. Sure, Body Slam is an alright normal-type move, but Slaking’s fast attack is Yawn, which does ZERO DAMAGE. So you can only use Body Slam after you’ve taken a load of hits. Sure, Slaking can easily reach over 3000CP (I evolved one Slakoth at 720ish CP and it turned into a 3309 Slaking) but Slaking’s only use is to throw him in gyms to slow people down. Even then, there are better choices who can actually fight back a little, like Blissey. All Slaking does is potentially scare off low level players who don’t have a Machamp yet.

On top of that, this Community Day’s bonus was probably the best thing about this event. Having eggs hatch at x4 speeds is a pretty nice bonus that’s probably more interesting than Slakoth itself. Weirdly, the x4 egg hatch rates are completely counter to Slakoth’s theme of being a lazy little bastard. In fact, it’s even weirder that Slakoth was chosen at all considering this week has been ADVENTURE WEEK, i.e. a week with bonus rewards for walking and adventuring! Thematically, Slakoth doesn’t even make sense.

Speaking of eggs though, I actually managed to hatch a few. I didn’t get many great things, but I did get literally the best Pokemon ever with 100% IVs.

Yep, out of all the Pokemon I could get to be my 10th perfect Pokemon, it HAD to be Shuckle. Oh well. She’s still an awesome little Shuckle.

This Community Day turned out pretty well for me, even if I didn’t get many shiny Slakoths. But I think for a lot of people, it wasn’t worth coming out, especially since it was about 30-32C here in the sun. If you’ve got a mediocre shiny Pokemon with a mediocre move that most people aren’t that much of a fan of, then you’ll need more than fast egg hatching to bring more people out.