You're trying to tell me that his specials aren't useless. I get that, and that's completely true. I didn't say that Greninja has the worst specials in the game. The word situational literally implies that they have uses in certain situations. But Top Tiers have specials that literally feel unfair in many situations.
Competitive fighters, and other competitive games like card games, aren't about being good enough or good, they're about being really dominant and having options that overwhelm your opponent. Greninja doesn't have those kinds of specials. Water Shuriken forces people to approach, yes... but that's about as useful as, say, Diddy's Peanut Popgun or Link's arrows. Not something you think of when you think of being dominated. When was the last time you got dominated by peanuts?
Needles are super dominant, on the other hand; not only do they force approaches, they can also lead to Bouncing Fish setups, can gimp, are practically invisible so rack up fast damage, and can be stored for infinite mindgames.
Similarly, Shadow Sneak can "catch people offguard," sure, but it's not in the same tier of effectiveness as forcibly dismantling someone's guard, like Monkey Flip does.
I may be underestimating Hydro Pump because it is worse than Quick Attack, so I won't comment on that.
I don't think I said anything that disagrees with this or you. "Character is not among the best, and has tools that don't match Top/High Tier tools" does not imply "character is bad/easy to play."
The potential is there, as it is with Peach, and Greninja is in fact hard to use. But it's worth noting that being hard to use isn't the only reason that Greninja has little representation: he's also legitimately worse than the top tier. More effort for less reward isn't often appealing. Good to keep a sense of scope.
