...dry tested it and slide is hard to rack after dry firing but nice and easy if racked not fired and racked again. Any ideas?
Of course. All hammer-fired guns are this way.
When you dry fire the gun, the hammer goes forward (to strike the cartridge). So when you pull the slide back after dry firing, you not only need the force to move the slide, you also need the force to recock the hammer (which is under heavy spring tension).
Now, if the hammer is cocked, and remains cocked (because you did not dry fire the gun), when you pull the slide back you only need the force to move the slide. You do not need the force to cock the hammer (since it is ALREADY cocked at that point).
As far as your initial problem when you said you couldn't cycle the slide one way or the other, since that did not reoccur, I would tend to write it off as user error. No offense intended, but since you did not know how slide cycling works (when it will be easy to rack, when it will be harder to rack), that makes me think you are pretty new to guns, so maybe subject to some initial user error.
See if your initial problem reoccurs and report back here for more advice if it does. My initial guess might be that you tried to baby the gun too much. That is a tendency when you are new to firearms. You don't want to "hurt" the gun so you pull the slide back very gently and slowly. That is a recipe for problems. Give that slide a forceful movement, don't baby it. You're not going to hurt the gun. Use gusto when cycling the slide of any semi-auto to avoid problems.