What Slick actually stops
The style has been patched five times since 16 October, and only one of those posts carries numbers you can plan around. Read the current set first, then the two rows that have no number at all.
| Incoming punch | Caught | Where the figure comes from | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jab | 40% | 20 Oct: jabs 40%, was 50% | Six in ten land, and four in ten hand over a counter |
| Cross | 36% | 20 Oct: crosses 36%, was 46% | Roughly two in three land — better than the jab, still the wrong end of the trade |
| Uppercut | 30% | 20 Oct: uppercut catch lowered to 30% | Seven in ten land: the best published route |
| Hook and overhand | No figure | 18 Oct: Catches more hooks, overhands, jabs and crosses, with no number for either punch | Unknown. The 20 October table does not cover these two punches, so nothing on this page claims a rate for them |
| Body shot | No figure | 18 Oct: Uppercuts and body shots still get through; no later post adds a body rate | The one route with no published catch on the other side |
The uppercut number explains most of the confusion in the channel. On 18 October the style caught no uppercuts at all; later that day the developer raised it to 50%, and less than an hour after that cut it to 30%. So players who learned the matchup in different weeks are describing three different styles. The jab figure moved the same way: 50% on 18 October, 40% on 20 October.
Two patches after that changed nothing published. The 21 October redesign rebuilt the Styles screen without restating a single rate, and the 22 October post only added that clean body shots no longer count as blocked when the body is open. Treat 20 October as the date these numbers were true, and check the Styles screen yourself if you are playing on a newer build.
The last line on the 20 October entry is the one that decides how a round should be paced: the guard now fades when you're low on gas. No number comes with it, so this page will not pretend to know where that threshold sits — but it means the catch is strongest in the first exchange and weakest once the Slick player has been made to work.
A caught punch is not a wasted punch for them
Most of the advice players give each other is about volume: throw more, spam the uppercut, break the guard. That misses the rule the same 20 October patch published two lines below the rates.
every catch style (Philly, Slick, Parry, Long Guard, Hitman, Karate, Muay Thai, Soviet) now opens a counter window when it catches a punch. Slick is on that list. A jab into the catch is therefore worse than a jab that misses: the miss costs you the punch, the catch costs you the punch and gives them a window. That is the mechanism behind the complaints below about fights that end in two or three exchanges.
Three other published rules decide which punch you should be throwing after the body shot lands:
- Uppercuts land up close instead of bouncing off a guard, and the same patch says to lean back to make one miss.
- Coming back the other way off your last shot — the three off the two — lands harder and faster, for less gas. Throwing the same hand again is a weak arm punch.
- Switching levels in rhythm, head to body or body to head, is harder to auto-defend than a flat sequence.
Put together, the published answer is a level change rather than a damage race: body first, because nothing catches it, then an uppercut when the guard drops, and a different hand after each shot.
Where "Slick blocks everything" comes from
On 28 October the channel produced both halves of the argument inside two hours, and both halves are worth reading next to the table above.
| Reported 28 Oct (UTC) | What a player said | How it reads against the published rates |
|---|---|---|
| 18:11Z | how do you even counter slick | The question this page answers: body shots and uppercuts, not more jabs |
| 18:27Z | i just spam upppercuts and win against Tthey always block my uppercuts | Two players, opposite experiences, same evening — which is what a 30% catch looks like over a small number of fights |
| 19:56Z | thats crazy how slick blocks almost everything | Four in ten jabs and three and a half in ten crosses are enough to feel like everything if you keep leading with them |
| 20:24Z | legit cant uppercut, idk how to uppercut a slick, they're always blocked | Three in ten are caught; the answer another player gave in the same thread was to work from the high-guard side and go right uppercut, close range |
| 20:24Z | slick is the meta bro, and a player reporting 9k to 12k rating on it | Popularity and rating movement, not a published ranking |
| 21:23Z | nerf catch and counter thing from slick, cuz its hella op | A request aimed at the catch-into-counter rule, which the 20 October patch did publish |
Nothing in that table is a mechanic. It is what the matchup feels like from the losing side, and it lines up with the arithmetic: a player leading with jabs is losing four in ten of them and being countered on each one, while the punch that actually gets through is the one they are not throwing.
How to play it if you just rolled one
The developer has never published a play guide for any style. What exists is a moderator of the game's own Discord answering a player who had just rolled Slick on 28 October, and his answers describe a distance style rather than a pressure one.
- Hold the high guard and counter instead of leading. His words: keep a high guard and counter mostly, and open up with combos when the round is about to end.
- Keep your distance. He called Slick not a good infighting style, and said distance is what makes the catch pay.
- Throw only into an open guard. Asked whether to attack after a missed jab, his answer was yes, if the guard is open.
- Use the body to move their guard. Aim at the body, he said, and it baits them into dropping a high guard to a low one.
- Pair it with a taller build. His advice, not a published rule — and the height roll is a coin gamble, so read the build page before you spend on it.
He also agreed that the left side is the weak one when a player asked. That is one moderator's read on 28 October and not a published hitbox, so it belongs in the same bracket as everything else in this section: useful, dated, and unverified.
A match plan in four steps
- Stop opening with jabs and crosses at range. Those are the two punches Slick catches most, and each catch gives the Slick player a counter window. A probe that gets caught is worse than no probe.
- Take the body first. No published line gives Slick a body catch, and since 22 October a clean body shot no longer counts as blocked when the body is open. Body work is also what the moderator recommended to pull a high guard down.
- Uppercut on the level change. Three in ten are caught, uppercuts now land properly up close, and coming back the other way off your last shot lands harder for less gas. Throw the other hand rather than the same one twice.
- Make them spend gas. The guard fades when the Slick player is low on gas. That is the only published lever that gets stronger as the fight goes on, so a long round favours the player who is not being caught.
If you are the one holding Slick, the same four steps read backwards: your catch is best early, your counter window is the reward for being punched into, and your danger zone is close range on low gas. The styles page puts these rates next to every other style's, and the tier list shows which styles ranked players name instead.
What this page cannot tell you
- What Slick catches for hooks and overhands. The 18 October buff says it catches more of both, and no post has ever published a figure. Nothing here is estimated to fill that gap.
- Whether 40 / 36 / 30 is still what the live build uses. These are the 20 October figures. The 21 October redesign of the Styles screen did not restate them, and no capture of Slick's own style panel was available for this page, so the numbers are quoted as published rather than observed today.
- How much the guard fades, and at what stamina. The 20 October patch says it fades; it gives no value.
- How long the catch counter window lasts. Published as a rule, never as a duration.
- Whether the left side is genuinely weaker. That comes from one moderator and one player on 28 October. No hitbox data or panel value has been published.
- Any win rate, pick rate or rating gain for the style. The 9k to 12k climb is one player's report about his own account.
No screenshot appears on this page. The rates here exist only as patch text, and the Styles screen capture this site already holds is the drop-tier panel used on the styles page, not a per-style rate panel. Each figure above is quoted from the post that published it, with its date.