Welcome back to another edition of Weekly Character Showcase! This is a series where we analyze the playable characters in Smash 4 and what they can do with both general and character-specific advanced techniques.
Like Mewtwo last week, we have another top-tier threat!* Greninja arrives this week at full power, and while he may not have much, the Ninja Pokemon will use everything to his advantage. To help us with this article we got Drystan from the Greninja Discord.
General ATs
Unlike Mewtwo, Greninja gets a lot from Perfect Pivots. A lot of the best combo follow ups are possible thanks to that technique. Neutral air into PP Up tilt is a basic combo starter. "Then you can also use bair to PP ftilt jab lock, obviously only if they miss the tech," says Drystan.
From there, Greninja gets to abuse one of the most overlooked techs in the whole game: footstools. "The basic Greninja footstool combo goes nair -> footstool -> dair -> shuriken stall x2, then nair to up smash." And while it my seem like a lot, it's actually pretty standard play.
With iStudying's recent success at Beast 6, we got the opportunity to appreciate some of Greninja's combos and tricks. Shown below is his Grand Finals match against Mr. R.
Character-specific
In this department, Greninja doesn't have much, but one of the things tat is worth mentioning is Shadow Sneak Hitstun Canceling. By using side-b in the middle of a multihit attack (usally rapid jabs), Greninja can get out. Unfortunately, he usually gets hit by the finisher anyways. We could explain more, but in Drystan's words "We arent really sure exactly how SSHC works".
Also, both Hydro Pump and Water Shuriken are two useful moves Greninja has. Hydro Pump, while a bit slow, can be used for tricky recoveries and to edguard some character who have predictable Up-bs, like Ness/Lucas or Fox/Falco. On the other hand, Water Shuriken is a decent projectile that sometimes acts as a combo starter. "On fast fallers, if you land a fully charged water shuriken, you can footstool after the last hit of it and dair, which proceeds to further footstool combos ."
Well, that's all for today! If you enjoyed this week's showcase, be sure to stay tuned. Also, if you wanna know more about Greninja, be sure to head over to the character boards.
And of course, special thanks to Drystan and the Greninja discord for the info.
*refering to Greninja being tiered Uber in the Pokemon Gen VI Metagame
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