Meta Mastery of the Arts - Greninja Matchup Thread Archive

[bc1910]

It's really hard for ZSS to kill Greninja. Having no lasting hitboxes or grab sucks, pressure destroys her. Shurikens destroys her long range. Play QCQ and long range, don't linger in midrange where you lose. 65:35 Ninja adv, ZSS's hardest MU.

Thank you for your input!

Shurikens don't really destroy her, considering that throwing one out at the wrong time will result in a flip kick to the face. Up close we have to deal with her f1 jab and excellent tilts, so I don't think we destroy her there either.

65:35 seems incredibly steep. We think even our best MUs are only 60:40, save Ganon who could be 65:35.

Would you mind explaining a bit further?

 

[#HBC | ZoZo]

Shurikens are only punishable by flip kick if charged. This means that ZSS basically has to approach. She loses long range.
Mid range she wins if shes in the air through short hop, which honestly isn't hard to be. That said, after you did your zair or nair, getting back in the air is hard. And even then, ZSS nair doesnt really beat Ninja fair, and Zair is iffy because anything Ninja does on the ground from that range beats Zair. Ftilt is great for ZSS, true, but Utilt and Dtilt are both EASILY punishable, and guess what, dash attack crouches under all Ftilt angles but down (good luck finding a ZSS using down angled) if timed well. Normal crouch should too.
QCQ is really hard for her, because outside of jab, utilt, ftilt and upb oos she doesn't have options, really. Notice how all of those are attacks? Notice how none of those beat spotdodge/roll (and except for ftilt and jab mindgames, shield)? Her grab is literally slower than human reaction time.
So what does she do in QCQ? She shields and hopes you **** up (you shouldn't), downBs to reset to midrange if given the opportunity, or tries to get a read. Don't get me wrong, if she gets the read you're ****ed, but that's her character. Oh by the way, you're not ****ed, because you negate our main combo ender/killer, but whatever. If she even got in QCQ past Shurikens (requires read) she now needs a read to get a combo on you. TL;DR Ninja gets to play his standard game, ZSS needs to read to mess it up. Sounds like an advantage to me. BUT, let's be fair, dash attack is a godlike whiff punish and jab is godlike. Those are stray hits you have to deal with, and if read correctly, you get to negate the followup (which should be more damage, and almost never a kill).
Her QCQ is extremely weak to dodges/rolls because of lack of lasting hitboxes as well as lack of hitboxes that hit on two sides (utilt behind her best one and at that extremely punishable). Same goes for most of her aerials, they don't really have lasting hitboxes which makes it really hard to beat Ninja's. ZSS Bair will almost never beat yours, and her uair will almost never beat your dair (though our upb can trade and in some wacko situations beat iirc).

"That said, playing that style Ninja doesn't do much damage. So yeah, while the incentive to read is with ZSS, she also gets more reward." is a semi-valid line of thinking. In terms of damage racking, I would give the advantage to Ninja still, he has decent combos and his pressure is still really strong on ZSS (no grab and unreliable-at-max-range-or-even-on-hit upB OoS does not a strong shield make), so there's that.
The issue is with killing. Like I said, try hitting a Bair. Try hitting an upB. Try finising an uair string.

All in all: Greninja has long range pressure, mid-range pressure, and close range pressure. Long range with Shurikens, mid-range because ZSS can't rely on shield and uses long-startup moves, and close range because ZSS has issues with defensive options. This is all broken up by ZSS getting a read, in which case she gets decent damage. However, she will almost never kill Greninja. Her best bet is an anti-air uTilt around 170% (earlier with rage).

 

[Coffee™]

Thank you for your input!

Shurikens don't really destroy her, considering that throwing one out at the wrong time will result in a flip kick to the face. Up close we have to deal with her f1 jab and excellent tilts, so I don't think we destroy her there either.

65:35 seems incredibly steep. We think even our best MUs are only 60:40, save Ganon who could be 65:35.

Would you mind explaining a bit further?

Shulk and Ganon are the only 2 matches where I think he does better than 60:40.

About ZSS though, I just wanted to comment about her tilts as I wouldn’t identify them as “excellent”. They’re really quite sub par in general and outside of Utilt ZSS doesn’t get much use from much them outside of gtfo me moves. Greninja consistently beats her in CQC outside of her getting the chance to reset to neutral.

 

[bc1910]

#HBC | ZoZo Interesting points. Not many I'd outright argue with. I guess my main reasoning for thinking this MU isn't that big of an advantage for us, if any, would be that you've glossed over ZSS' strengths here. She can kill off of so many of her moves, many don't require insanely hard reads to land and we only get out of her BK kill combos. Any combo into Flip Jump spike is still gonna end us at 40. Though I take on board what you said about Greninja being hard to kill, he is hard to hit with any of her combo starters. Also, yes she can only punish charged shurikens with Flip Jump on reaction, but any time we start to get overly spammy with shurikens she can soft read it and punish. We can't keep up the shuriken pressure on her safely, so I don't think we can keep her out particularly well.

One thing on her CQC, you mentioned a weakness to dodges due to a lack of lasting hitboxes. This may be true, but Greninja has the same issue. Bair and sort of Nair are meaty, but aside from that he doesn't have lasting hitboxes to deal with dodges either. So they would have the same CQC issues as each other. His standing grab's startup is nearly as bad as hers (admittedly it's much less punishable on whiff, but his grab is still crap). He does have safer moves to deal with rolling, ie dash attack and dashgrab, but I don't think Greninja deals with spotdodge well at all. ZSS can at least hold A for a pseudo-meaty hitbox, which can beat spotdodge easily.

Shulk and Ganon are the only 2 matches where I think he does better than 60:40.

About ZSS though, I just wanted to comment about her tilts as I wouldn’t identify them as “excellent”. They’re really quite sub par in general and outside of Utilt ZSS doesn’t get much use from much them outside of gtfo me moves. Greninja consistently beats her in CQC outside of her getting the chance to reset to neutral.

Finally someone else who sees that we're not like the bane of all Jigglypuffs...

I agree on Ganon, but I don't think Shulk is much better than 55:45 for us. I think it plays out similar to the Ike MU, but he trades some attack speed and raw kill power for annoying mobility and range. I think Shulk can wall us out of CQC very well especially with spaced aerials but gets camped fairly hard, which lets us keep a slight advantage in neutral (our advantage/disadvantage states are both better too). I guess it could be a bigger advantage for us, it's an annoying MU though.

On ZSS, her tilts probably aren't excellent for strict CQC in fairness. Dtilt is bad but Ftilt and Utilt are both excellent when you consider their other applications. Ftilt is very similar to ours, trading some range for speed, and it's just a really good low risk, low reward poke. Utilt might be punishable but it's a 3f 12% move that hits on both sides and kills with rage so it speaks for itself.

 

[#HBC | ZoZo]

That's fair @ QCQ, and yes, spamming Shurikens is not ideal, you simply use enough to force an approach. On top of that, he has way better ways to deal with shield than ZSS in terms of continuous pressure.

I think 60/40 at least. Personally would go as far as 70/30, but I want to avoid personal bias. I think anything below 60/40 is unfair, personally. Then again, I'm just one voice. Take what I said and decide for yourselves. If you have any further questions tag me and I'll pop back in :3c

 

[bc1910]

That's fair @ QCQ, and yes, spamming Shurikens is not ideal, you simply use enough to force an approach. On top of that, he has way better ways to deal with shield than ZSS in terms of continuous pressure.

I think 60/40 at least. Personally would go as far as 70/30, but I want to avoid personal bias. I think anything below 60/40 is unfair, personally. Then again, I'm just one voice. Take what I said and decide for yourselves. If you have any further questions tag me and I'll pop back in :3c

Yeah, thanks for your input, it's been super helpful. And obviously it's great to have input from a ZSS main.

It'd be really interesting to put this MU at 60:40. I really do want to start fleshing out our ratios a bit more (I think we have far too many that get listed as even and a few too many listed as 45:55 or 55:45) and just say okay, who is realistically going to win this MU at high level, and can we get out of this safe "even" zone. Definitely some great food for thought here.

 

[Coffee™]

#HBC | ZoZo Interesting points. Not many I'd outright argue with. I guess my main reasoning for thinking this MU isn't that big of an advantage for us, if any, would be that you've glossed over ZSS' strengths here. She can kill off of so many of her moves, many don't require insanely hard reads to land and we only get out of her BK kill combos. Any combo into Flip Jump spike is still gonna end us at 40. Though I take on board what you said about Greninja being hard to kill, he is hard to hit with any of her combo starters. Also, yes she can only punish charged shurikens with Flip Jump on reaction, but any time we start to get overly spammy with shurikens she can soft read it and punish. We can't keep up the shuriken pressure on her safely, so I don't think we can keep her out particularly well.

The only “easyish” kills she gets in the matchup are off Bairs. Everything else is a read. Flip Jump doesn’t seem to combo from anything either. I’ve literally never had any issue DI’ing her “setups” into it and just air dodging. In addition, going for Flip Jump offstage really leaves ZSS open to edgeguards if she misses.

As for shurikens, Greninja can’t really spam them against any good character so that’s nothing new. It should be noted that ZSS can possibly punish badly spaced shurikens if she gets the read, but it’s not a scenario that should happen often once you’re mindful of your spacing.

Finally someone else who sees that we're not like the bane of all Jigglypuffs...

I agree on Ganon, but I don't think Shulk is much better than 55:45 for us. I think it plays out similar to the Ike MU, but he trades some attack speed and raw kill power for annoying mobility and range. I think Shulk can wall us out of CQC very well especially with spaced aerials but gets camped fairly hard, which lets us keep a slight advantage in neutral (our advantage/disadvantage states are both better too). I guess it could be a bigger advantage for us, it's an annoying MU though.

Don’t get me wrong. I think Greninja vs Jiggs is terrible for Jiggs and it may just be 65:35, but I haven’t played a good Jiggs in a long time so I’d rather not jump to conclusions as I haven’t really looked at that matchup in detail in quite some time.

As for Shulk, I think Greninja just runs circles around him. Outside of Speed and Jump Monado he doesn’t really pose any offensive threat and Greninja can waste them by just avoiding him until they start to run out, which from my experience has proven to be pretty easy given Greninja’s mobility.

Greninja destroys his recovery, juggles him for days and I’m pretty sure Jab Jab to Fsmash is a legit kill setup on him at highish percents. At worst it’s a 50:50, I’m just unsure of what his best options are against it.

It’s not a good matchup for Shulk.

On ZSS, her tilts probably aren't excellent for strict CQC in fairness. Dtilt is bad but Ftilt and Utilt are both excellent when you consider their other applications. Ftilt is very similar to ours, trading some range for speed, and it's just a really good low risk, low reward poke. Utilt might be punishable but it's a 3f 12% move that hits on both sides and kills with rage so it speaks for itself.

Dtilt is bad, agreed. Ftilt is useful as a get off me option, but the range on it isn’t the greatest and it it doesn’t really accomplish anything her frame 1 jab doesn’t. Utilt is useful as a get off me option and it sets up opponents for Uair followups and even kills with rage. It’s a good move in application, but still quite punishable overall and it’s easy to bait out as it’s ZSS main go to option in a lot of CQC scenarios.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

*blinks*

Ike is up again?

I'm having a very strong sense of deja vu....

Might be too soon to have this discussion again considering that Ike was part of the last week of your guy's rotation apparently.

Uh.... with the newest patch Ike's aerials are pretty mad safe on shield now. Before shield drop Nair is 0, Fair and Bair are like -1 and Uair is like -2. And then with shield drop its only -7 to -9 range for those aerials, meaning that as long as we aren't screwing up the spacing you can't shield grab our aerials and there is enough pushback that you can't OoS Jab us as a punishment either.

Dtilt is also extremely safe on shield. Don't have those exact numbers on me but if its spaced its really hard to punish. Jab is also no longer OoS Grabbable. Pivot Ftilts are more safe as well. Really everything is by a more than average increase due to the high damage per hit Ike has but those stand out the most.

Beyond that I uh don't know what much has changed.

 

[FullMoon]

I don't think Greninja could shieldgrab any of Ike's stuff even before the patch with a frame 14 standing grab.

What I get from this is that Greninja shouldn't try punishing a lot of Ike's stuff if he does shield it and instead should try to get distance from him and get in a good position. Ike's disjoints are hard to deal with because they're big hitboxes and also strong, we shouldn't shield much like in most MUs but it can be hard to avoid shielding against Ike.

However we now have a very safe N-Air and F-Air against Ike. If he tries to shieldgrab our N-Air we can either spotdodge it or make a trade with jab meaning he won't be getting consistent punishes out of N-Air, even then a well-spaced N-Air still won't be punishable, same with F-Air which is safe as long as we don't get right in Ike's face with it.

This is a MU that needs to be played with caution on-stage, both characters can get a lot going on once they hit advantage. Greninja forces an approach with shurikens which gives him a good advantage in neutral and the extra safety on his moves mean that he we can do some pressure on Ike's shield now without having to fear a punish too much.

Offstage, if Greninja catches Ike using Aether it's a very easy Hydro Pump gimp, however Quick Draw makes it pretty hard to get Ike to actually be forced to Aether. I think the best way for Greninja to gimp Ike is to throw shurikens at him while he's charging Quick Draw as that would hit him out of it and he likely wouldn't have enough time to begin charging another one.

Ike similarly can't get anything guaranteed on Greninja when we're offstage. Eruption kills can happen but we can go over it with Hydro Pump and land safely thanks to Ike's endlag and our slide, or we can Shadow Sneak past it and even hit him for it. Going offstage against Greninja is pretty dangerous because if Ike misses a F-Air on us we could potentially kill him by hitting him with a B-Air, so I think Ike would do better staying onstage.

Overall I want to say we win because Ike's shield safety doesn't really allow him to do too much that he couldn't already do to us before while we are significantly safer on his shield now. Greninja has a fast projectile with good range and better mobility and an easier time gimping Ike. Ike himself can kill us much easier since he packs a serious punch with his moves and his disjoints give him better overall range than us.

I would say we either have a small advantage or it's even. Either way I don't think Greninja loses this MU.

 

[bc1910]

*blinks*

Ike is up again?

I'm having a very strong sense of deja vu....

Might be too soon to have this discussion again considering that Ike was part of the last week of your guy's rotation apparently.

Uh.... with the newest patch Ike's aerials are pretty mad safe on shield now. Before shield drop Nair is 0, Fair and Bair are like -1 and Uair is like -2. And then with shield drop its only -7 to -9 range for those aerials, meaning that as long as we aren't screwing up the spacing you can't shield grab our aerials and there is enough pushback that you can't OoS Jab us as a punishment either.

Dtilt is also extremely safe on shield. Don't have those exact numbers on me but if its spaced its really hard to punish. Jab is also no longer OoS Grabbable. Pivot Ftilts are more safe as well. Really everything is by a more than average increase due to the high damage per hit Ike has but those stand out the most.

Beyond that I uh don't know what much has changed.

Ike's aerials and tilts were always safe on Greninja's shield. This is another MU where even though the opponent gets a lot from the patch, it barely matters because our shield was terrible anyway lol.

While we get the typical added safety on Fair, Bair, Ftilt and Nair that we get vs almost everyone. Though I think Ike might still be able to punish Ftilt with drop shield dash attack.

I'm too tired to give a full analysis but everything Fullmoon said looks correct and I think this is 55:45 Greninja's favour. My tl;dr analysis is that you wreck us up close and whilst we can play the spacing game with you it's dangerous to do so. However you get camped pretty hard, both your recovery moves are very susceptible to Hydro Pump and we don't care about Eruption edgeguards because we can go slightly above the ledge, HP away from the stage so that the water pushes you back, then HP back towards the stage. If done correctly we should be out of Eruption's range. Overall I think we edgeguard and camp you a little too hard for you to win, though I can see this as even too.

 

[FullMoon]

Though I think Ike might still be able to punish Ftilt with drop shield dash attack.

F-Tilt is -16 on shield. Counting with shield drop frames Ike's dash attack would take 22 frames to come out, he definitely can't do that lol

 

[Nidtendofreak]

We don't get camp particularly hard: Ike still has one of the best Dash -> Shield in the game. One projectile ain't going to cut it for keeping us out. Really, not even MegaMan can do that...

PP'd Dtilt might be able to punish Ftilt. 7 from the frame drop, 7 for Dtilt itself, 2 frames for the PP forwards? Or possibly just Dtilt OoS. Or just going straight for Jab 2 as its pretty disjointed and we can reach that point pretty quickly. Both options would probably need testing for range. If Dtilt does punish it though that leads into combos.

Eruption we can just end early and then punish your landing. Just because we start charing it doesn't mean we have to hold it. The moment you start moving with Up B we can decide to go for another option. And of course because you might be going high to try to get over Eruption, that means we have time to position ourselves. So it becomes mix ups vs mix ups and not a straight cut "Greninja doesn't care about Ike's edgeguarding": nobody in the game can truly fully ignore Ike's edgeguarding because its not straight forwards.

 

[FullMoon]

Hence why I said that he just doesn't have anything guaranteed, it can happen, just like how we can also gimp you.

Still, Eruption has almost 50 frames of endlag doesn't it? I don't think you'll be able to see us deciding to go recover high after you begin charging eruption, release it and still punish our choice, especially when Greninja slides pretty far after landing giving him further distance away from Ike while he's in landing lag.

I just find it really hard to believe that you can drop Eruption and still punish our landing like that

 

[Nidtendofreak]

We can do it against Falcon if he decides to go high. Lucario is another obvious example. Really, if a character going high enough to completely avoid Eruption and its massive disjoint (can hit somebody on a BF platform and then some in terms of height), there is a good chance we can punish if we had decided to let go earily.

Maybe didn't make it clear before, but it would be less a reaction to you going high and more of a decision to go "the moment I see the Up B go release regardless of the direction it goes". If you went straight for the ledge, might run into the lingering frames. If decided to go super high, we have time to at least try to set up a punish. Hence it being a mixup option. I think its realistic to expect Greninja to die at least once to a Eruption related event during a set assuming the Ike player is the type to use Eruption and not walk-off aerials.

 

[FullMoon]

What about if Greninja does a back-and-forth with Hydro Pump? It would push Ike away from the ledge and allow Greninja to get on the ledge safely. What answer does Ike have to that?

 

[Nidtendofreak]

In the situation I explained, Ike has still released Eruption. I don't have a mental image of how far back Ike would be. He can cover ledge options for a decent distance back.

Of course, if Greninja is close enough to do that, I don't know why we'd be using Eruption in the first place.

 

[FullMoon]

The distance of the push would depend on his damage but all right.

I'm still a little skeptical, I'll admit, I would have to see or experience this kind of situation in a real match before I can be fully convinced of this. Though honestly MU inexperience would probably cloud things a little considering both characters are pretty rare, even rarer is one playing against the other.

Either way, both characters are capable of edgeguarding each other well which doesn't really go against what I said. I do think Greninja has an easier time though.

The shield nerf overall benefits Greninja more than it does to Ike in this MU because our shield was always bad, Greninja being able to get away with N-Air and F-Air more easily on Ike is a pretty big thing. Even though we can't just pin Ike down with shurikens, they still allow us to control space very well and force an approach from him which is a great help.

Damage-wise, they are close to each other, our F-Air and N-Air do 14% and 12% respectively, more than your corresponding aerial, and they both can lead into stuff for more damage. Your smashes are really strong but outside of D-Smash they're also really slow (and our sweetspot Up-Smash still does more damage than yours, lol) so Greninja can definetely compete with Ike when it comes down to dishing out pain with BnB moves.

Ike kills significantly earlier though, and has better range on his moves to balance out Greninja's shurikens and mobility. I do think his disadvantaged state is worse than Greninja's though, since at least Greninja can use Hydro Pump to mix up his landing, so I think Greninja can stay in advantage for longer than Ike does.

I think in general the MU comes down to who has the better time in neutral, and I would say Greninja has the edge here because of his shurikens.

 

[bc1910]

We can literally push you back from the ledge during the Eruption charge and force you to whiff, then ledgesnap. And if we are that close and you don't use Eruption (I don't think that can be achieved on reaction so you could well be using it while we're close but whatever) we can airdodge past the ledge and Up B or jump to it.

And no you definitely can't release a move with 50f of endlag and punish our landing on reaction (if you miss, which you may not), because Greninja skids really far back when landing from a horizontal HP.

I think Greninja defends against Ike's edgeguarding better than most. But yes he probably doesn't invalidate it. He might be one of the hardest characters for Ike to edgeguard though, I would think nearly as hard as characters who can recover high and remain 100% safe (as in keep the option to airdodge Fair/Bair). Jigglypuff? Yoshi? Wario probably? Wario has the added benefit of being able to throw the bike into Ike.

Oh yeah we can also throw a shuriken at you from offstage if you use Eruption prematurely, which has a FAF of 39 in the air.

F-Tilt is -16 on shield. Counting with shield drop frames Ike's dash attack would take 22 frames to come out, he definitely can't do that lol

Yeah I'll blame that on tiredness lol.

Just tested it and Ike can't punish spaced Ftilt on shield with anything. Dtilt and PP Dtilt don't have enough range and DA is too slow. Your spacing has to be on point though.

Oh by the by let's not pretend Greninja is totally helpless in CQC either. Far from it. Any aerial overextension that doesn't hit our shield should lead to a dashgrab. Greninja's jab is faster than Ike's whole kit. Dtilt is fast, safe on block outside Ike's shieldgrab range and leads to combos. Nair is safe on Ike's block. Ike wins CQC but Greninja can defend himself well enough.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Wario is fairly easily to hit with Eruption actually if he's hit low. Obviously if he was hit upwards it's not happening, but Ike's Fair can hit him through the bike so he should always be taking damage when recovering actually. Yoshi is frequently taking damage as well and has a problem where his head sticks up too high over the ledge for his own good. But that's not the MU at hand.

Did you test Jab 2? As I said its both fast and disjointed, possibly more so than Dtilt even (Dtilt's range was nerfed slightly way back when it got its angle buff).

Aerial overextensions shouldn't be leading into a dash grab if its Bair or Fair because well, complete auto-cancel. Particularly Bair where its almost hard to not auto-cancel it.

Don't forget to consider Ike's throw combos when looking at BnB. They can lead into kills as well, particularly Uthrow into Uair because its one of the strongest Uairs in the game now and there is a range where its a true combo. Also don't get grab at sub 10% or so, otherwise you're taking 40+% damage.

 

[bc1910]

Jab 2 is too slow to punish I'm afraid. Greninja can shield.

Ike's throw combos are pretty good. Definitely got to watch out for Uthrow Uair at kill percent, though the window where it's a true 50/50 (as in you can't just jump out) is pretty small and though I can't be sure, it looks DI-able. Though by DI-ing you make it easier for Ike to do Uthrow Fair which is almost as deadly.

We have huge low % throw combos too due to the Dthrow buff which lets it lead into Dtilt, it requires a few mixups but so do Ike's low % throw combos. So it's pretty even in that regard. We also get a true 50/50 kill confirm in Dthrow Fair; it kills much later than Ike's but works at a much wider percent range. This KC is also DI-able but Greninja throws you very quickly during his Dthrow (it looks like you can DI later in the animation than you actually can) making dashgrab to Dthrow hard to react to and DI.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

As far as I know, Uair is generally not very DIable out of Uthrow. Its either a true combo or 50/50 until reaaaaaally late percents. Like, "Dthrow is killing now" late. Depends a bit on how stale Uthrow is. Very large hitbox, hits in front of him twice, eats airdodges. But ya, Fair is more consistent (both in a longer window of being a true combo and longer 50/50 window) and is reasonably deadly.

 

[ephOE]

Hydro Pump is really, really bad for Ike. Ike will want to approach from the air if Greninja is using lots of WS, since his aerials have good range and frame data. Grounded Hydro Pump aimed up at Ike makes it really hard for him to get close enough to do is damage.

Ike pretty much has to recover low with his Up B. If he reaches the apex of Aether even just a little above the stage, Greninja can push him away before Ike can snap the ledge. Practice this in training mode - just throw Ike off and stand far away enough from the ledge to not let Ragnell phase through and hit you, but still within Hydro Pump range. Just HP sideways while Ike is spinning and you'll gimp him almost every time.

Recovering with Side B is dangerous because if Greninja isn't at high %, he can just intercept it. Or Hydro Pump can stall Ike's recovery and lead to up or down smashes, or more Hydro Pumps to push him further away. OR, if you hit Ike's Side B recovery from underneath him (say, if an Ike tries to recover to the platforms on his favorite stage, Battlefield), you can actually prevent Ike from ever landing on the stage. It's pretty funny, he just kind of flies up and over like a caped superhero.

 

[Gunla]

Spoiler: My Ratings: Week 2

- After running into a Ness this weekend I've personally changed my mind on the MU. 50:50 for reasons stated by many before me.
Stages to Avoid: Duck Hunt/Final Destination - Generally gives him more space to use PK Fire and some other moves.
Stages to Pick: Town & City? - Generally unsure of what exactly to pick but we always like having TC.

- Fought quite a few Ikes as of late and I definitely see this being a slight advantage of 55:45. Having a projectile no doubt gives us an edge and we can really screw with his recovery.
Stages: I can't say much on what I'd prefer as a stage, but there's probably some options.

Spoiler: Week 2 Results

: 50:50 Even (Unchanged) - Still wasn't really discussed much, but from what I can tell it was mostly agreement on that 50:50.
Stages to Avoid: Duck Hunt/Final Destination - Generally gives him more space to use PK Fire and some other
Stages to Pick: Town & City/Halberd - Generally preferred stages for us.

: 55:45 Greninja Slight Advantage (Unchanged) - Even with the new additions to Ike's arsenal, Greninja still does a number on his offstage game. The main thing will be watching out for his onstage game, due to his range.
Stages: None added - feel free to suggest stages to add to the third post.

: 55:45 Slight Advantage - I couldn't ignore the great discussion that took place. See ZoZo's post for more details on the MU.
Stages are unchanged.

Week 3:

Greninja VS The Gas Tank With A Motorcycle: Wario!
An interesting matchup, no doubt. Wario's solid kit is really harmed by his middling approach options. However, he's not to be underestimated, especially with his bike shenanigans. I try to leave waft out of this MU when possible as it appears the Wario boards have the issue with some matchups and deciding what exactly it is.
Current Rating: 50:50 Even
Stages to Avoid:
Stages to Pick:


Greninja VS The Mouse Of The Smash House: Pikachu!
Pikachu is considered to be one of the top 5 in this game, potentially even more; his small size is but one of the properties that benefits him so much, in addition to his offensive game. Pikachu is considered to be one of the matchups we may lose, as he's currently set at a disadvantage.
Current Rating: 45:55 Slight Disadvantage
Stages to Avoid:
Stages to Pick:

 

[Omla]

Hello! I'm pretty new to the whole MU thing, so who does greninja do well again? How about who he fails to?

 

[biribiri]

Hello! I'm pretty new to the whole MU thing, so who does greninja do well again? How about who he fails to?

Check the first page of this thread

 

[Knife8193]

**** that, space the hell out of him and you might win 45:55
Camp and force him to approach and wreck him when he approaches 60:40
Can camp pretty well with hopped shurikens but **** her combos and fair. Kinda easy to run under and usmash though, or at least force her to play grounded. 50:50
Can combo/gimp him easily but has ton of kill power. 55:45
He's got meaty fast aeriels. Spaced fair is good though. 45:55
How do you stop spindash? 40:60
Not as bad as everyone thinks it is but yeah worst MU 40:60
Get rid of Luma pretty well, easy to hit with usmash. 60:40
Camp him kinda easily, easy to hit with usmash 55:45

I haven't played against other (good) mains enough to say about other characters.

 

[Gunla]

We're focusing on Wario/Pika this week; please keep it to those characters.

 

[bc1910]

I'd politely suggest moving ZSS to 55:45 for now. The discussion was great but considering a lot of us thought it was even despite ZoZo's post, I think 60:40 is a bit too good. I don't think we can rank this as 60:40 until we start re-evaluating what 55:45 and 60:40 actually mean (which opens up a whole other can of worms). So I'd put this at +1 Greninja, which we seem to use 55:45 for.

Jury's out on Wario for me now. I used to be pretty sure this was a -1, but there are some things I wasn't doing properly. I was overly reliant on shurikens for sure which gave him too many free punishes with bike, and SH shuriken is easy to avoid bike with because you can jump afterwards. His air camping is still a total pain to deal with but at least we have range on our side with Fair, Bair and Usmash (though Usmash trades a lot more often than I'd like). Wario doesn't have many good kill confirms, as long as you don't shield by the ledge at Fthrow kill percents you'll be living for a long time. Killing him isn't easy either, but we fall back on a far more versatile rage Uthrow. Waft is irritating but again easy to avoid especially if you know the hit confirms for it (Nair, last few frames of dash attack). It has to be respected though. We can ignore Wario's ledge traps with Bike and Chomp through clever use of Hydro Pump, but we can't edgeguard him very well.

In theory this MU is probably slightly in our favour, even at worst, but it's still really hard in practice for me. Wario's air camping can just make him a total pain to hit especially if he's good at abusing airdodge. I'd be happy to list it as -1 or 0.

Pikachu I think is even. He's just not that scary IMO. Shield patch did a lot for him but we couldn't punish his crap anyway, and now he can't punish ours. Tjolt is now worse on shield which is really nice. We should be able to outcome Pika now. Random Hydro Pump in neutral is unpunishable and forces him to not spam Quick Attack too much so there's that. Pika still has trouble killing from grabs; they have new tech involving RAR which means they can follow your DI and always true combo Uthrow Thunder, but because it's from a vertical throw, you can DI away from the ledge closest to you when you get thrown and then DI towards Pikachu (as you will get launched in the other direction) to make yourself difficult to kill with that combo until it stops working anyway.

Coffee™ thinks Pikachu is a bad MU for us so I'd be interested to hear why.

 

[FullMoon]

I don't really have anything to say about either of this MUs but tagging @SolidSense here since he mains Pikachu and has had Greninja and most of the high tier characters as a secondary

 

[Codaption]

How do you stop spindash? 40:60
Not as bad as everyone thinks it is but yeah worst MU 40:60
Get rid of Luma pretty well, easy to hit with usmash. 60:40

Here for my bicentennial post on these boards, thought I'd point out a few things here on these three in particular.

-Spindash...actually isn't too hard to break. You can outpriortize it pretty easy as most characters, and Greninja in particular should have an easy time- shurikens make for a nice answer from afar, and a majorly disjointed fsmash should do the trick up close.
-Not sure how bad you think it is but lacking any answer to Shiek Fair makes for a pretty rough time. That being said, there's been a few pretty nice upsides to the mu mentioned here from time to time, though certainly far from enough to make this matchup good or even okay, so I guess that's a decent analysis?
-It's very easy to clear out Luma, but Rosie can just kinda.... hop around until he comes back. Good Rosaluma players will still be far from easy pickings when her Stafie wannabe kid is cleared out, most characters do have some way to take him out so it's a general skill to be able to stick around until he pfoofs back into existence.

 

[Coffee™]

I'd politely suggest moving ZSS to 55:45 for now. The discussion was great but considering a lot of us thought it was even despite ZoZo's post, I think 60:40 is a bit too good. I don't think we can rank this as 60:40 until we start re-evaluating what 55:45 and 60:40 actually mean (which opens up a whole other can of worms). So I'd put this at +1 Greninja, which we seem to use 55:45 for.

Jury's out on Wario for me now. I used to be pretty sure this was a -1, but there are some things I wasn't doing properly. I was overly reliant on shurikens for sure which gave him too many free punishes with bike, and SH shuriken is easy to avoid bike with because you can jump afterwards. His air camping is still a total pain to deal with but at least we have range on our side with Fair, Bair and Usmash (though Usmash trades a lot more often than I'd like). Wario doesn't have many good kill confirms, as long as you don't shield by the ledge at Fthrow kill percents you'll be living for a long time. Killing him isn't easy either, but we fall back on a far more versatile rage Uthrow. Waft is irritating but again easy to avoid especially if you know the hit confirms for it (Nair, last few frames of dash attack). It has to be respected though. We can ignore Wario's ledge traps with Bike and Chomp through clever use of Hydro Pump, but we can't edgeguard him very well.

In theory this MU is probably slightly in our favour, even at worst, but it's still really hard in practice for me. Wario's air camping can just make him a total pain to hit especially if he's good at abusing airdodge. I'd be happy to list it as -1 or 0.

Pikachu I think is even. He's just not that scary IMO. Shield patch did a lot for him but we couldn't punish his crap anyway, and now he can't punish ours. Tjolt is now worse on shield which is really nice. We should be able to outcome Pika now. Random Hydro Pump in neutral is unpunishable and forces him to not spam Quick Attack too much so there's that. Pika still has trouble killing from grabs; they have new tech involving RAR which means they can follow your DI and always true combo Uthrow Thunder, but because it's from a vertical throw, you can DI away from the ledge closest to you when you get thrown and then DI towards Pikachu (as you will get launched in the other direction) to make yourself difficult to kill with that combo until it stops working anyway.

Coffee™ thinks Pikachu is a bad MU for us so I'd be interested to hear why.

I think it would be wise to determine what 55:45 / 60:40 / +1/ -2 etc....mean before we take discussion on matchup numbers further. There literally is no point to discussing them unless we agree to something.

On the topic of ZSS, I don't think 60:40 is "too good". A 60:40 is stil quite winnable matchup for the losing character. It just signifies that the winning character's tools are just more effective in the matchup....but again that goes back to defining what these numbers are really going to stand for so.......yeaaaaa.

I think Greninja beats Wario about the same. It is hard as hell for Wario to get in safely. And the spacing Greninja prefers to play at means that Wario really has to work to land wafts.

Pika I think is even after 1.1.1. Greninja needed a bigger offensive presence in the matchup and he got it so I have no issues with seeing it at 50:50. I believe the last post I had seen from @SolidSense about the matchup leaned towards it being even as well.

 

[SteadyDisciple]

So, I'm no expert on any of this stuff, but as far as I was lead to believe, the matchup numbers are representative of the expected win/loss ratio if two characters are played by players of equal skill level (most likely a very high skill level, as they are mostly applied to competitive matches). As such, a 60:40 matchup would mean that the lower party still wins 40% of the matches.

 

[bc1910]

There is so much discrepancy in the MU ratios. I think we should step away from MU ratios and start using simple numbers, ie. what the Brawl MU chart did.

0 is even, +1 is a small advantage, +2 is a soft counter, +3 is a hard counter.

I'd say 55:45 is +1, 60:40 is +2 (hence I don't think that's appropriate for ZSS) and 70:30 is +3. But honestly the ratios are less important than the raw numbers. All we need to know is does Greninja have an advantage or disadvantage, and if so, roughly how big is it? The numbers are a nice simple way to measure his advantages.

 

[Gunla]

I follow that sort of thing, bc1910 . I'm used to using the numeric ratios but I put the words in there as well; I can put conversions and comparison charts with the tables for the +/- things if desired, but in the end the ratio and number is not the core. It just makes it look a little nicer and streamlined.

 

[Coffee™]

There is so much discrepancy in the MU ratios. I think we should step away from MU ratios and start using simple numbers, ie. what the Brawl MU chart did.

0 is even, +1 is a small advantage, +2 is a soft counter, +3 is a hard counter.

I'd say 55:45 is +1, 60:40 is +2 (hence I don't think that's appropriate for ZSS) and 70:30 is +3. But honestly the ratios are less important than the raw numbers. All we need to know is does Greninja have an advantage or disadvantage, and if so, roughly how big is it? The numbers are a nice simple way to measure his advantages.

I’m down to do that, I’d probably list +3 as 65:35 for the sake of consistency but it’s not a big deal.

With that said though I’d still list ZSS as a +2 for Greninja. Her throw combos are the only thing that make her meta relevant and Greninja is the one character that doesn’t really care too much about them; whilst still giving her quite a bit trouble in a lot of other scenarios.

Based on character tools it seems harder to argue that this matchup is even rather than Greninja’s favor imo.

Why do you think it’s that close to even?

 

[SteadyDisciple]

There is so much discrepancy in the MU ratios. I think we should step away from MU ratios and start using simple numbers, ie. what the Brawl MU chart did.

0 is even, +1 is a small advantage, +2 is a soft counter, +3 is a hard counter.

I'd say 55:45 is +1, 60:40 is +2 (hence I don't think that's appropriate for ZSS) and 70:30 is +3. But honestly the ratios are less important than the raw numbers. All we need to know is does Greninja have an advantage or disadvantage, and if so, roughly how big is it? The numbers are a nice simple way to measure his advantages.

While I'm not entirely against the use of simple numbers to describe matchups (since you are completely right about the discrepancies thanks to matchup numbers being primarily speculative in nature), I do have to point out at least one small flaw with the idea. Could just be accidental wording, but if it isn't it should probably be addressed.

In your post, you draw direct parallels between the ratio scores and the "simple number" scores. If this is the case, than simple number scores just become representative of ratios, effectively a type of jargon with no advantages over the ratios other than that they look slightly cleaner. Meanwhile, drawbacks include providing less relatable information to those who do not know the conversions between simple numbers and ratios, as the simple number system is not as grounded in application.

Of course, like I said, just my thoughts on the matter. If the simple number system exists unrelated to the ratios, than this whole little rant is handled rather neatly, but if they ARE tied to the ratios then it seems like just an unnecessary additional step in applying the values.

 

[Knife8193]

Lol, ZSS is not better than even.

 

[bc1910]

I’m down to do that, I’d probably list +3 as 65:35 for the sake of consistency but it’s not a big deal.

With that said though I’d still list ZSS as a +2 for Greninja. Her throw combos are the only thing that make her meta relevant and Greninja is the one character that doesn’t really care too much about them; whilst still giving her quite a bit trouble in a lot of other scenarios.

Based on character tools it seems harder to argue that this matchup is even rather than Greninja’s favor imo.

Why do you think it’s that close to even?

Firstly she's hard to kill. We might be hard to kill for her too, but it certainly goes both ways. She is extremely hard to pin down and lock into any kind of disadvantage or 50/50 because of flip jump and her generally high mobility.

Secondly her damage output from throws and her general advantage state is still extremely high. Whilst she can't kill us with Boost Kick that much, she can still rack up crazy damage with her standard combos since we can't escape them after low percents. Getting us up to her standard hoo hah kill percent isn't hard.

Also, we cannot escape her death combos by using the SS hitstun cancel with platforms (she Uairs you off the top) or rage (you can fall out of BK early but get pushed off the top; this happened to Zero in the last game of MLG finals vs Nairo) involved.

Her strengths are still too polarising for us to have anything more than a +1 advantage and I still think a case can be made for the MU being even, but we do have unique strengths and a strong enough neutral presence to make her sweat more than usual.

Incidentally I think Greninja's neutral is amazing right now. With the amount of safe pokes he has combined with his mobility, it can be really hard to crack him open. The only characters who I can think of with better neutral, off the top of my head, are Sheik, Diddy, Pikachu and maybe Fox.

 

[Codaption]

Lol, ZSS is not better than even.

Please contribute to the conversation instead of popping in with your opinion and no reasoning behind it. Thank you.

 

[Luco]

Oh, wow, no Ness mains came in to say anything! Really sorry, we sometimes do that, our most active Ness players seem to live a bit more off the boards these days sadly. Sorry we couldn't contribute anything in time, hopefully once I get back to Australia I'll have some time to be a teensy bit more active and get some more MU exp on my plate to give insight. Love you guys though. <3