Battle Bond (Ash)/Protean Greninja?

Question

Greninja is a highly-used Pokemon in competitive (as well as practically my favorite Pokémon), but Greninja is good with two different abilities.

The first is, of course, Battle Bond. Now I know with this, moves like Water Shuriken can hit 3 times (With around 60 base damage each), and I know that Greninjas stats in general don’t disappoint. With items like choice specs/choice scarf, Greninja can have arguably the best sp atk or speed stats in the game.

With Protean, you don’t have super-saiyan stats like Battle Bond, but with protean, Greninja can get a STAB bonus on every attack, which can really help Greninja not go down in one hit.

Can anybody recommend to me what form I should use, and why?

Comments

This is for competitive, right? What format? OU or something else?

Answer 1

It really depends on what the rest of your team is, as both Greninja have different uses. I’ll tell you what worked from personal experience.
HA Greninja to me felt like despite its types still lacked defense a little. So I tried Ash Greninja.

Ash Greninja is obviously better than protein in stats. It has higher speed and really close special attack to Mewtwo, one of the greatest standard sweepers of all time. Ash a Greninja has access to STAB priority moves such as water shuriken and STAB reliable moves such as Dark Pulse, perfect for a sweeper. Also, if you are wondering how hard it is to activate battle bond, I wrote a short experience about my strategy.

My pro strategy is to abuse Ash-Greninja’s insane speed, it’s usually able to out -speed most Dragon and Ghost types (I choose those because they are really common). I have it hold Iceium or Darknium Z depending on what’s more popular (Dragon or Ghost or Psychic type). Make sure to get that Greninja in a place where it’s Z-Move is super effective (Sounds really hard and situational but it’s not really, due to the amount of ground/dragon type users). You use the Z-Move and it should OHKO. Greninja battle bond activates and you now have a super powerful Pokémon and an OHKO on your opponent.

The strategy worked well for me.

Final note: some may argue Greninja is supposed to be unpredictable, and nobody will suspect Z-Move Greninja.

Comments

But both Greninjas play differently, each suits different teams. Generalising that Ash-Greninja is better than Protean Greninja is wrong. Don't forget that Protean Greninja was Ubers in XY.