Slade already has the worst recovery in the game, requiring heavy resource usage now to make his recovery have any distance, up b having poor distance on it & is easily countered by floorhugging, parrying or ledgehogging it, and while the new neutral b hop helps, still leaves him incredibly vulnerable during it, while gaining way less distance than other vulnerable, hitbox-less recovery options like Zetter flip or Kragg pillarless (who also can do theirs more than once without losing value).
Two of Slade’s upgrades, alongside AGT, is meant to fix his recovery: Chain Hook and Winged Boots. Winged Boots’s tiny third jump barely helps, but at least it’s onstage benefits are incredibly helpful to where I don’t think it needs the recovery buff.
However, Chain Hook is not good enough. Chain Hook already gives Slade struggles, his grab becoming both slower and more laggy, even if the extra range and active frames are nice. Many Slades often consider it his worst upgrade, outside of the meme-y and flawed Phoenix Feather.
However, he finally gains the most helpful recovery tool in the game with tether: the famed horizontal dash.
Nearly every character in the game has a horizontal dash option to help them get to wall and then walljump out of, the only characters who don’t have excellent recovery options to where they don’t need… except Slade.
Slade already has to buy his 1000 gold horizontal dash, but he’s even more out of luck after this.
Slade is the only character who permanently loses his horizontal dash after using it. Every other character gets it back. Zetter gets flip back, Kragg gets pillarless, Lox gets side b, Ranno gets tongue, Fleet gets down b, I can keep going.
Slade has to buy his 1000 gold horizontal dash and if he gets hit after using it he never gets it back. Already on the one item that actively nerfs one of your existing options already.
Surely AGT is not good enough to warrant this being a downside only he suffers from. (It’s not, Slade already struggles getting horizontal distance to the wall as is, which is why Chain Hook’s tether and Winged Boots’ third jump are so important to him to get any sort of horizontal).
Please buff Chain Hook to where he gets tether back after he gets hit once he’s used it.