Slide Overview
Slide is a long-range Low attack that sends your character sliding feet first at the opponent. It is a move shared by Law, Lee, and Shaheen, who are often referred to as "Slide Characters." It is a low that knocks down on hit, side-swaps, and requires the opponent to use a specific float combo to punish.
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Law's Slide
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Lee's Slide - not to be confused with his Mist Step 3+4 (MS.3+4)
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Shaheen's Slide - Shaheen enters his Stealth Step (SNK) stance after his Slide successfully connects with the opponent
Characters with a Slide can often form a game plan around it by mixing it in with their other moves that can be done from While Standing, like Law's ws1,2 or Lee's ws2,3, or from Full Crouch like their hopkicks.
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Law's ws1,2
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Lee's ws2,3
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Shaheen's hopkick (u+4 or uf+4) done while in Full Crouch
How To Slide
The input is df,d,df+3 while in Full Crouch.
Slide is a move that can only be done while in Full Crouch (FC for short), which means you need to be crouching for at least 11 frames in total before the last input of Slide (d/f+3) or it will not come out. If the input is done too quickly then your character will just do FC3 instead.
You can utilize Instant Full Crouch (iFC) techniques, like using the first input of Slide to buffer the full crouch or inputting d/b first, to ensure you were crouching long enough while still getting Slide out in a reasonably short amount of time.
When done as fast as possible, your command history would look similar to the following examples:
| Standing | |
| Full crouch | |
| Half crouch | |
| While standing |
Since Slide has 16 frames of startup and requires 11 frames of FC, the entire process takes roughly 25-26 frames in total.
Although that may sound slow, since Snake Edges are reactable and have similar startup, it's important to distinguish the fact that Slide itself is not 25-26 frames, just the whole process of Full Crouch > Slide.
Slide is un-reactable at i16 so it's much more likely that the opponent can react to your character crouching and the subsequent situation instead of Slide, but it's still very fast and easy to miss if you blink.
Slide Pressure
As mentioned above, Slide can be done quickly and sometimes faster than your opponent can recognize the situation, but you can also do Slide slower than that to begin the mind games. Once you've hit your opponent with Slide a couple times they should start looking for it, which is the perfect time to start changing your timing and mixing things up.
You can purposefully do Slide pretty slowly (as the game seems to hold onto the inputs for quite a while) to throw the opponent off of your timing if they're trying to low parry or block it. You can even get a whole crouching dash out before executing Slide, as the example on the right shows.
Once you've successfully conditioned your opponent to fear the Slide you can start taking more aggressive approaches. You can use crouching dashes to inch closer to your opponent, or mix in some mid pokes to chip away at the opponent to keep them guessing. Be as unpredictable as possible while making sure to adapt to the opponent's responses.
You can think of Slide Pressure similarly to Wave Dash pressure; it's a unique and effective way of closing distance and placing your opponent in mix-up situations if you have conditioned them well enough.
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Take advantage of Slide's long range to be a threat from a distance
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Use the threat of Slide to get in range for a Poke
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Use the threat of Slide to work your way in on the opponent
This is just meant to be a brief overview of Slide. If you are looking for character specifics visit the pages for Law, Lee, or Shaheen.
Characters With A Similar Tool
There are 3 other characters who have a move similar to Slide. They are:
- Bob - Stealing Home (BAL 4). Only available during his Spinner Ball (f+3+4) and is a Launcher
- Lei - Sliding Kick (SLD 4~3). Only available during his Sidewind (head first) (d+1+4) stance
- Master Raven - Vermillion (BT f,F+3+4). Only available during Backturn. Like Bob's, it is a launcher
While these moves are often also referred to as "slides", they are different in that they are all restricted to specific stances and they are not a central part of that character's game plans. You might not see any of the above moves in a match, but it's almost a guarantee that you will see a Law/Lee/Shaheen slide at least once.
Resources
- How To Do Slide by King Jae
- Slide Fundamentals by LegendKicker