What's a good secondary for Greninja players?

[Jubj&]

I've recently picked up greninja, and I do realize he's high-ish tier. Although he's good against the majority of the cast, he can't beat out a certain group. What's a good secondary for greninja that compensates for his weaknesses?

 

[Tibec]

If it can help you the 5th best french player main Greninja and use Pacman and RosaLuma as secondaries

 

[Jaguar360]

The best secondaries for Greninja are those who can contend with Sheik, Fox and Sonic, since they are generally agreed as his worst matchups. This makes characters like Pikachu, Rosalina, Zero Suit Samus and Mario, along with Sonic and Sheik themselves, good secondaries. Yoshi seems good too, but I'm not sure about him and Meta Knight could also work.

 

[Illusion.]

Kirby wouldn't be a bad option since he goes even with Sheik and beats Fox.

 

[Steve.Stone]

Kirby is even with Sheik? O.O Good thing I already goof around with him, now to get good!

 

[Knife8193]

Sheik is obviously best, but if you use Sheik, why use any other character at all?

Greninja bad/unfavorable MUs are usually thought to be Sheik, Sonic, and Fox. You want a character to handle these. ZSS covers 2, with a decent MU against Sheik. Lucario is good/even with Sheik and Sonic but has trouble with Fox. Kirby is evenish with Sheik but probably loses to Fox and Sonic. Luigi is good for Fox, evenish with Sonic, but loses badly to Sheik. Mario, Fox, Pikachu, or Sonic are pretty even with all 3 imo.

Or you can suck it up and deal with a 40:60 and two 45:55 MUs and invest time into Greninja instead putting time into secondaries up to you. I think Greninja's perfectly fine solo viable though. I mean people were still beating MK back in Brawl and winning some big tourneys even with 60:40 or worse MUs, no johns.

What characters are you having trouble against? Maybe its just that you don't know what tools Greninja has for the MU.

 

[Jubj&]

Sheik is obviously best, but if you use Sheik, why use any other character at all?

Greninja bad/unfavorable MUs are usually thought to be Sheik, Sonic, and Fox. You want a character to handle these. ZSS covers 2, with a decent MU against Sheik. Lucario is good/even with Sheik and Sonic but has trouble with Fox. Kirby is evenish with Sheik but probably loses to Fox and Sonic. Luigi is good for Fox, evenish with Sonic, but loses badly to Sheik. Mario, Fox, Pikachu, or Sonic are pretty even with all 3 imo.

Or you can suck it up and deal with a 40:60 and two 45:55 MUs and invest time into Greninja instead putting time into secondaries up to you. I think Greninja's perfectly fine solo viable though. I mean people were still beating MK back in Brawl and winning some big tourneys even with 60:40 or worse MUs, no johns.

What characters are you having trouble against? Maybe its just that you don't know what tools Greninja has for the MU.

Mainly against Fox and Sheik. I can put up with Sonic because of a local player, but I get stuck specifically on Sheik. Her needles can shut me down, but her combo game is too strong for me. Her ftilt combos, fairs, and generally her setups are the things that gets me.

 

[Knife8193]

Good use of Shadow Sneak to break combos I think is good. I think you can also Shadow Sneak out of her Fsmash and uair with good timing, take away two KO options is pretty good. I don't think I'm qualified to speak much about this MU since I don't really play good Sheiks very often. Perhaps someone can be a bro and link to the a Sheik vs Greninja MU discussion?

 

[bc1910]

Kirby doesn't go even with Sheik. I'm skeptical of him beating Fox as well.

Greninja's losing MUs in order from worst to best are, IMO, Sheik, Sonic and Fox. Greninja also has iffy MUs with Wario, Lucario and Toon Link, though I don't know if I'd say we outright lose to any of them. I don't think any of Greninja's bad MUs outright require a secondary, but I can certainly understand wanting a secondary to take the edge off those MUs.

Sheik and Sonic are the most important to cover. At this stage I think the Fox MU is very doable, so that's lower priority for me, but it's a consideration as well.

That said, I think ZSS is the best secondary for Greninja bar none. This is for a few reasons:

• ZSS beats Sonic and does well against Sheik. Some are suggesting she may beat Sheik. Whilst I don't know if that's true, she is looking like Sheik's worst MU.
• ZSS and Greninja can be played similarly. They share a lot of quirks such as high jumps, high overall mobility, no rising SH aerials and a poor standing grab. Many things are transferable over the two characters.
• ZSS does well against Fox and can be useful against Lucario, as she can often kill him before the Aura BS starts.
• Greninja does fine in ZSS' worst MUs, such as Ness and Pikachu.

I would highly recommend ZSS as a secondary if one is serious about taking Greninja to tourney.

Sheik is another good choice. I don't agree with the school of thought that if you're seconding Sheik you should just use her because she's the best; there are legitimately MUs I feel Greninja does better in (Mario is a big one) and it's fine to second a good character to cover some bad MUs without defaulting to maining that character. So anyway, Sheik obviously goes even with herself, she beats Fox and does well against Sonic, though most players of both characters tend to list the Sonic MU as even. Sheik can also be played a bit like Greninja, though I think there are fewer similarities than with ZSS actually. The issues with using Sheik as a secondary are that she doesn't perform as well in Greninja's bad MUs as ZSS does, and you're unlikely to beat a good Sheik in a ditto unless you really dedicate learning that MU.

A little lower down the tier list, Mario and Pikachu are both good choices. They do well in the three bad MUs and aren't very hard to pick up.

I probably wouldn't recommend Diddy, Fox or Luigi, as they lose some of the same MUs Greninja does.

 

[Snackss]

It's just going to be Mario or Sheik every time we have this discussion. I think people really need to ask themselves why, from a gameplay/ competitive standpoint, they bother to play Greninja. What advantages does he have and where does he come up short, and pick your secondary from what feels right. Greninja has bad matchup overlap with 90% of the rest of the cast because that's just how this game or Smash Bros. in general works out. So the best you can do, aside from just picking Mario or Sheik or putting a ton of work into Zero Suit, is find someone who covers your or what you feel your weaknesses are with Greninja, and if they have a bad matchup against Sonic or Sheik, you're just going to have to accept that and figure out which character you prefer to use. Because there are all of 3-4 characters who don't lose to them, and they're all top tiers.

 

[TTYK]

I just play DK. Lol. **** tier lists. And MU's don't matter when you have a ridiculously good kill confirm

 

[Rubiss]

I enjoy using Zelda and Roy along side with Greninja, but I think, objectively speaking, Rosalina and Luma is a good secondary. Both play the spacing game, excel at juggling and can often force players to approach. There is some skill transfer there.

 

[bc1910]

You're not wrong about the skill transfer, but Rosa loses to Sheik and has trouble with Pika. Her Sonic MU is also iffy. From an objective standpoint I think there are others who cover Greninja's bad MUs a lot better.

 

[Rubiss]

You're not wrong about the skill transfer, but Rosa loses to Sheik and has trouble with Pika. Her Sonic MU is also iffy. From an objective standpoint I think there are others who cover Greninja's bad MUs a lot better.

Good point. I had completely forgotten about Sheik. I was under the impression that Greninja did decently against Pikachu, but I must have been mistaken.

 

[bc1910]

He does okay against Pika (IMO it's an even MU) but it's one of his iffier MUs. After Sheik, Fox and Sonic, I think Pika and Diddy are Greninja's toughest MUs. I'd say they're both even but I'd prefer a secondary who at least doesn't lose to them.

 

[Steve.Stone]

If I can't win with Greninja I try for Shulk or C.Falcon since Shulk has huge range and Falcon is really fast. So far they're my best bet against Sonic, Diddy and Pikachu. I haven't played as Cloud yet but playing against him he seems fast with a large range. I'm also gonna wait and see for Bayonetta because Witch Time seems like a game changer.

 

[Richard & Blaziken]

I've been using ROB as a secondary to help with the Sonic matchup since ROB controls the stage with Gyro which slows down Sonic's spindash shenanigans a bit. ROB's projectiles in general deal with Sonic a lot better than Shurikens, which just clank with spindash, and ROB can launch Gyro with much less lag than Greninja throws out Shuriken. I don't think it's a perfect matchup for ROB, but it has certainly been going better for me than Greninja does in this matchup.

 

[PenguinStorm]

I use Diddy Kong as a secondary. Greninja's matchups aren't all favorable with Sheik, Sonic, and Rosalina, but a good defensive Diddy can perform well with any of the top tiers. In addition, he's great against Cloud and ZSS. What's important to remember is that Greninja can contend with even the best of characters. A secondary is for when you need a boost to overcome a better player/character. I also go falcon when full aggro is recquired to win.