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Effects of the new mechanics on Greninja

MartinAW4

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Oct 25, 2014
Messages
312
There have been quite a few new mechanics introduced in Smash Ultimate mostly aimed at making the game more offensively oriented and nerfing defensive options. These changes might have a significant impact on different character playstyles, so I would like to take a look at how these changes are likely to affect Greninja.

In Smash 4, Greninja was a very mobile character with not very good out of shield options due to its slow grab, slow aerials and Up B out of shield not being practical. So Greninja was far more reliant on its mobility for defense than most of the other characters who could abuse the powerful shields and rolls in Smash 4.
Greninja also had a wide variety of powerful combos with the drawback that most of them were set up from DTilt or UTilt which were not easy to land in neutral. And while the footstool combos were very popular among Greninja players, they were not very consistent and eventually the best Greninja players learned to mostly rely on the standard combos and make use of footstools only when they were truly optimal, which was far more rare than people would think.

With all of this in mind, let us take a look at some of the new changes and how they might affect Greninja:

1) Dash cancel into Tilts and Smashes
This is one of the best changes Greninja could wish for. With a very fast dash and amazing combo starters in DTilt and UTilt, being able to cancel your dash into these options will make it a lot easier for Greninja to pull off its most powerful combos.
UTilt > USmash at early percents, UTilt > UAir drag downs for mid percent damage racking and DTilt > USmash, DTilt > Fair, UTilt > UAir or even UTilt > Shadow Sneak 50/50 for closing out the stocks will all be easier to land now.
And I could see even dash cancel into DSmash have some use for catching landings or punishing ledge options.

2) Weaker Shields and Roll Decay

This is one of the changes that will likely have the biggest impact on the gameplay of most characters. However for Greninja as a character who relied a lot more on its mobility instead of traditional defensive options, the transition to the new playstyle should be very smooth and favorable as one of the most mobile characters in the game. Dash dancing might also become a powerful option now, so it remains to be seen how good Greninja's dash dance will be.

3) New Perfect Shields
Perfect shielding now involves releasing shield at the right moment which seems to negate all shield stun and shield damage. This also seems to provide a larger punish window than perfect shielding did in Smash 4 which would really help with Greninja's slow out of shield punishes. It will be interesting to see how this new mechanic is used in practice once players master it. But it does seem to have a lot of potential to help characters with weaker out of shield games.

4) Airdodge end lag increase
Airdoges now have so much end lag, that they become a very punishable option. This makes edgeguarding, air juggling and frame trapping opponents in the air a lot easier and more effective. This might be the most favorable change for Greninja since many of its kill setups relied on 50/50s which now become a lot easier to guess or might even turn into frame traps. Greninja also has many good options for catching landings and very high jumps for juggling players in the air. And Greninja is very good at edgeguarding with its multi-hit BAir, Hydro Pump or even Shadow Sneak which is basically an aerial smash attack that kills extremely early off stage.

On the receiving end of this change, Greninja does not have the best disadvantage state with no combo breaker aerials (unless Shadow Sneak hitstun canceling is back, but even that was punishable and not very reliable) and no fast aerial mobility options like Bouncing Fish or Monkey Flip. However Greninja does have a very fast fall speed and Hydro Pump which can help with landing using clever angles to push the opponent away. Landing with a retreating Bair or Fair was also safe on shield in Smash 4 which likely stays true unless the new Perfect shields make these options punishable.
And in terms of recovery, Greninja covers a very long distance with Hydro Pump and also has the option to angle it around an edgeguarding opponent or use the water to push the opponent away before grabbing the ledge. Greninja also has some nice Shadow Sneak mixups which allow it to come back from almost anywhere off stage and can sometimes reverse edgeguard an unsuspecting opponent.
Its main weakness is the bit of start-up that Hydro Pump has and no Up B hitbox that could reach through the stage. But Greninja should still have one of the best recoveries in the game which will likely be a lot more important now that edgeguarding is so much more powerful.

5) Techable Footstools
This seems like a big nerf at first glance with how popular Greninja was for its footstool combos. However in practice, the footstool combos were never very realiable. They could even be DIed which often lead to Greninja players dropping otherwise guaranteed punishes or getting punished for going for a footstool combo instead of a less flashy standard combo punish.
Another thing to note is that some of Greninja's footstool combos do not give the footstooled player any opportunity to tech because they are immediately followed up by DAir before they touch the ground. This leads to an untechable footstool jab lock setup which should still work even with the new changes. This is something to test out once the game is released.

6) Damage increase in 1v1
This might seem like a change that affects all characters equally but that might not necessarily be the case. I have not seen a confirmation on whether it is just the damage that increases or if knockback is increased as well (from the video in the Direct, it seems there is no knockback increase at all, only damage).
In case knockback was increased as well, this change should increase the narrow windows when some kill setups are true. Greninja for example had UThrow > UAir or DTilt > USmash kill setups that were true kill setups only for a roughly 10% window, which would become a bit wider and more reliable in 1v1.
But even if it is just a damage increase, this change should favor fast combo heavy characters like Sheik, Diddy and Greninja more than slow heavy characters mainly because the fast characters would be able to rack up damage more quickly with their combos with less move staling and they should be getting kills more easily which was usually the main area where they struggled.

I will be updating the list as more new mechanics get revealed. If I forgot anything or if you disagree with some of my interpretations, please feel free to post your thoughts below.
 

MasterMicahWH

Smash Rookie
Joined
Oct 19, 2015
Messages
10
Location
Charlotte, NC
NNID
MasterMicahWH
Switch FC
7765-5492-7400
Most of this is holding up from what I see.In terms of new mechanics, I'd throw in the fact that hydro pump can be used twice on the ground horizontally and there's almost no sliding upon hitting the ground after hydro pump. He feels like a tank that's been repurposed as a Ferrari in this game and it's amazing.
 
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