Every weapon in MW2 has an animation sequence that has to be completed before you are able to fire. That includes the animation time it takes to switch to your primary weapon from your secondary, as well as the animation time of bringing up your weapon to aim down its sight. Slide canceling is a technique in Modern Warfare 2 that allows you to reduce that animation time.
When slide canceling is done right, you can have faster reaction times to in turn increase your chances of winning firefights.
However, being able to slide cancel takes some getting used to. There are also several ways to do a slide cancel in the game. The following guide will get you started so that you can slide cancel on the fly in your high-stake MW2 multiplayer matches.
How to do a slide cancel in MW2
Slide Canceling can be done in a couple of ways in CoD Modern Warfare 2. All of these methods are slight variations of each other. We recommend going with the way you feel the most comfortable with.
Something important to note is that you can only do a slide cancel while doing a normal sprint. If you try to do a slide cancel while doing a Tactical Sprint, you will do a dive instead.
Method #1
The basic way of doing a slide cancel in Modern Warfare 2 comprises four actions. These actions need to be done in very quick succession.
- Do a slide while sprinting.
- Aim down the sight as soon as the slide begins.
- Perform a melee attack immediately after aiming down the sight.
- Jump to cancel the slide animation.
- You should already be aiming down the sight. Fire at will.
The basic way of doing a slide cancel in Modern Warfare 2 comprises four actions. These actions need to be done in very quick succession. If you perform these actions right, you will almost immediately open your ADS (optics) instead of the normal, slow animation sequence.
Method #2
For this method, you need to change your weapon mount activation to Double-Tap ADS. You can then do a slide cancel in just three steps.
- Do a slide while sprinting.
- Double tap your ADS button to aim down the sight.
- Jump to cancel the slide animation.
A big downside to this method is that the weapon mounting can leave you vulnerable for a brief moment if you happen to come in contact with a mountable surface while performing this method.
Method #3
This method of slide canceling in MWII is somewhat similar to the first method as it involves no weapon mounting. Perform the following steps to slide cancel with this method
- Equip your secondary weapon (must be a pistol).
- Initial a slide while sprinting.
- Then quickly switch to your secondary and ADS.
- Now jump to cancel the slide.
This method is slower than both of the previous methods and you can easily get caught by the enemy with a pistol out instead of your primary.
Best slide cancel settings in MW2
If you are finding it difficult to mash all of those buttons in the right order (sprint > slide > aim > melee > jump > fire), you can change your controller/keyboard settings to bind multiple actions on a single button. This will make it easier to slide cancel in MW2.
- Head into Controller/Keyboard settings from the main menu.
- Change Automatic Sprint to Automatic Tactical Sprint.
- Change Weapon Mount Activation to Double-Tap ADS.
- Head into Advanced settings from the same Controller/Keyboard settings menu.
- Disable Grounded Mantle.
- Disable Automatic Grounded Mantle.
- Change Invert Slide and Dive Behavior to Standard.
These settings are optimal for the aforementioned second method for slide canceling in CoD MW2.
