Little (important) update about the inner workings of the Bombslide which will be necessary reading material for any Link main:

It's possible that I may have made some reference to this stuff before and maybe just didn't have explanations for it at the time. As such the OP will require updating, at some point... [edit: done.]





It all revolves around what the Grab button actually is and the interaction between the A-stick and the joystick.



Upon inputting the Grab button, the game interprets it as if you had pressed both the Shield button and the A button on the same frame. Then on the following frame, if the Grab button is still being held down, the game interprets it as if you continued to hold the Shield button but let go of the A button.



What this means for the Bombslide is that if you use the Grab button to do the 'dash throw' input, you cannot use the A button or the A-stick to input the second throw on the following frame. This is because the game would read this as if you pressed the Shield and A button on the first frame, then continued to hold the A button on the following frame. Thankfully, continuing to hold the Grab button will not cause you to continue to input 'A', and this is why you can hold Grab and still have the Bombslide work. What this does mean however is that if you use the Grab button to input the dash throw, you can be too quick at inputting the second throw with A or the A-stick. If you don't leave at least a frame of space in between the throw inputs, the Bombslide will not work. This particular problem does not apply to the A+B input method or the Grab + C-stick input method (because I swear there's some kind of 'smash' input tied to A+B and the C-stick which is somehow distinct from the A button; I could explain further but it's not relevant right now).



Upon hitting the A-stick in any direction, the game interprets it as if you lightly tilted the joystick in that direction and hit A on the same frame, then on the following frame nothing is inputted from the A-stick and the game looks elsewhere for inputs. If for example the joystick was being held in a direction the whole time, before during and after the A-stick input, upon hitting the A-stick the game would ignore the joystick for that one frame and pretend that it was tilted in the direction of the A-stick, and then on the following frame it will pretend that the joystick immediately moved from the direction the A-stick was pointing to the direction the joystick had actually been pointing the entire time.



Bringing these two mechanics together, if you go to do a Bombslide with the Grab + A-stick input method, it will be impossible to do a non fake-out Bombslide. The best you could do is hit Grab to do the dash throw, wait a frame, hit the A-stick to input the second throw, then because the A-stick is taking up the joystick input for the frame it is inputted you have to wait till the following frame for the upwards activating joystick input as that will be the earliest it can occur, and this will be on the third frame of the dash throw making it a fake-out. So yes, if you are frame perfect, the best you can achieve with the Grab + A-stick input method is the longest slide of a fake-out Bombslide.



Luckily, input perfection is made easier when using the A-stick because it means you only need to time the A-stick input. Essentially, you are able to move (and hold) the joystick upwards on any frame following the Grab input, and then the frame after you hit the A-stick, the upwards activating input will automatically kick in. So e.g. you can hit Grab to do the dash throw, on the following frame hit and hold Up on the joystick, then on the following frame hit the A-stick (you may also hit and hold Up here too), and then on the following frame the game will register a fresh upwards activating input even though you inputted it earlier, resulting in the perfect Bombslide fake-out.





tl;dr

What does this all mean? How will this affect which methods I use to Bombslide?

If you currently use the Grab + A input method, don't bother with it. Using the A + B input method is a straight upgrade because there's no risk of inputting the second throw too early.

I would however still recommend using the Grab + A-stick input method for Bombslide fake outs. For starters, you are guaranteed that the bomb will travel forwards and won't get thrown upwards, which is presumably what you want. But I would also recommend that you start thinking about the input order differently. Instead of thinking 'Grab then A-stick then Up', think 'Grab then Up then A-stick' quickly. Just know that you can hit the A-stick too early which will make it so you don't Bombslide at all, and know also that so long as you input (and hold) Up earlier, the only thing that will determine the length of your slide is the timing of the A-stick input.