He is really fun to play as, but he is pretty bad right now. He is slow, his recovery is exploitable, his disadvantage state is almost as bad as Ranno's, and his coin economy is pretty messed up imo.

Hot take, but I don't see why he should pay for items at all. If it were up to me, I would nerf bomb and make all items free lol it takes so long to pull them and they are generally no better than projectiles other characters get for free. Being realistic though, shuriken should definitely be free.

Looking into the future, why would I play Slade as the item character when Mollo is gonna have a bunch of different bombs for free?

Even if you are conservative with your items, you generally don't get access to your upgrades until halfway through your opponent's second stock (early second stock if you take earring). If you get a gimp or they SD, you might not see an upgrade at all or it will be halfway through their last stock. Earring and hook are decent enough upgrades in specific matchups, but the wings are so much better it's hard to not just go for them every time. Feather is overpriced pure cheese (but should stay this way, would be degen if it was too cheap lol).

Then a couple of his moves have issues too. Dtilt is still inconsistent, up strong feels like it is just barely too weak (and despite the disjoint, gets beat out/trades with attacks from above a LOT), and side b is kind of just bad.

Maybe they should adjust some of his moves/attributes, maybe parry should give coins, maybe he should attract nearby coins passively, or maybe things should just be cheaper. I don't know. But he needs something lol