Every Showdown usage chart says Battle Bond is Greninja’s best ability — 97% of Gen 9 OU Greninja run it. There’s just one problem: you can’t get one. Battle Bond Greninja was a one-time Mystery Gift tied to the 2016 Sun/Moon demo, it was never re-released, and Bulbapedia’s own ability page states plainly that a Greninja with Battle Bond cannot even enter a Pokémon Champions match[1]. Every Greninja anyone catches, breeds, or raids for today runs Torrent or Protean — and Protean is the one that matters.
So the real question isn’t “Battle Bond or Protean.” It’s whether a Protean Greninja, built the way 99% of players will actually own one, can still compete. The answer is yes, and the reason is base 122 Speed — a number that, run the math, still clears almost the entire current Pokémon Champions usage leaderboard.
Greninja’s Base Stats, and Why the Nature Question Is Really a Survival Question
Greninja’s base stats are 72 HP / 95 Atk / 67 Def / 103 SpA / 71 SpD / 122 Speed — a 530 total[1]. Look at the Defense and Special Defense columns: 67 and 71. That’s lower than Charmander’s fully-evolved line in several matchups — our Best Charizard Nature and Moveset guide covers a Pokémon that can actually afford to take a hit and answer back. Greninja can’t. A single unresisted hit from most modern attackers puts it in KO range, which means Greninja’s nature isn’t really a damage-optimization choice — it’s a decide-who-acts-first choice. If Greninja moves before the threat in front of it, that threat usually doesn’t get to move at all. If it doesn’t, Greninja is frequently just gone.
That’s the whole case for Timid. Nothing else about Greninja’s kit works if it’s not fast enough to use it.
Why Protean Is the Only Ability Worth Building Around
Torrent, Protean, and Battle Bond are Greninja’s three abilities, but only two are relevant to anyone reading this. Torrent boosts Water-type move power by 50% below ⅓ HP — a last-gasp panic button that assumes Greninja survived long enough to get low, which its own defense stats make unlikely. Protean is different: it changes Greninja’s type to match whatever move it’s about to use, right before that move hits[1]. Since Generation IX, that shift only happens once per switch-in rather than every turn, but the first move after switching in still gets a free same-type-attack bonus on anything in the moveset — and, just as importantly, it means Greninja is never locked into its native Water/Dark defensive weaknesses while attacking, since the type-change lands before the opposing move resolves.
Battle Bond, meanwhile, isn’t just rare — it’s structurally different from the ability everyone’s used to seeing on Ash’s Greninja. In Generation IX its effect was redesigned: it no longer transforms Greninja into Ash-Greninja at all. Instead, KOing a target with Battle Bond active raises Attack, Special Attack, and Speed by one stage each, once per battle[2]. That’s a real effect — which is exactly why the Pokémon Company banned it from its own competitive game rather than let a 2016 demo code decide who gets a stat-boosting ability nobody else can obtain. Even the Scarlet/Violet 7-Star Tera Raid event Greninja, the game’s own promotional showcase Pokémon, was handed out with Protean, not Battle Bond[3]. That’s Game Freak itself confirming which ability the format is actually built around.
Pikalytics’ own Pokémon Champions data shows it: Protean sits at 82% ability usage on base Greninja in the official format, with Battle Bond nowhere in the option pool at all[4]. The Showdown OU numbers you’ll see quoted elsewhere reflect a simulator that doesn’t enforce the same restriction — useful for measuring raw power, useless for anyone actually building a team for the game Nintendo runs tournaments on.
Greninja isn’t the only Pokemon whose entire competitive identity runs through one ability rather than raw stats — our Best Lucario Moveset guide covers Adaptability, which pushes same-type bonus damage even higher instead of changing typing outright. Both are cases where the ability, not the base stat total, is what the build is built around.
Best Nature for Greninja: Timid, Not Modest or Jolly
Three natures show up in Greninja discussions, and they’re not close to interchangeable:
| Nature | Effect | When It’s Actually Right |
|---|---|---|
| Timid | +Speed, −Attack | Default choice. Greninja’s Attack stat (95) barely matters on a Special-leaning set anyway — losing it costs almost nothing, and Speed decides whether Greninja gets to act. |
| Modest | +Sp. Atk, −Attack | Only worth it on a Trick Room team, where being slow is the point, or when running Choice Scarf (which fixes Speed with the item instead of the nature, freeing the nature slot for power). |
| Jolly | +Speed, −Sp. Atk | Only for the physical mixed-coverage set below, where Sp. Atk isn’t the main damage stat and Attack-boosting Liquidation/Gunk Shot lines carry the set instead. |
For a standard special-attacking Protean Greninja — the set most players will actually run — Timid is correct close to 100% of the time. Pikalytics’ Champions data backs this directly: Timid leads Greninja’s nature distribution at 57%, ahead of Modest at 29% and Jolly at 14%[4].
How Fast Is Timid Greninja, Really?
Base 122 sounds fast in the abstract. Here’s what it means in practice, using the standard level-100 stat formula (2×Base+99, ×1.1 for a boosting nature) against the Pokémon that actually top the current Pokémon Champions Regulation M-B usage charts — not the handful of glass-cannon legendaries every other speed-tier article leads with, but the Pokémon players are genuinely building teams around right now.
| Pokémon | Base Speed | Speed @ Lv.100 (best nature) | Outsped by Timid Greninja (377)? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kingambit | 50 | 199 | Yes, easily |
| Incineroar | 60 | 219 (neutral) | Yes, easily |
| Sylveon | 60 | 219 (neutral) | Yes, easily |
| Tyranitar | 61 | 221 (neutral) | Yes, easily |
| Basculegion | 78 | 255 (neutral) | Yes |
| Staraptor | 100 | 328 (Jolly) | Yes |
| Garchomp | 102 | 333 (Jolly) | Yes |
| Sneasler | 120 | 372 (Jolly) | Yes, by 5 points |
| Greninja (Timid) | 122 | 377 | — |
| Dragapult | 142 | 421 (Timid) | No |
That’s the actual shape of the current metagame: Regulation M-B’s most-used Pokémon — Kingambit, Basculegion, Garchomp, Sneasler, Incineroar, Tyranitar, Sylveon, Staraptor — skew toward bulky, priority-reliant, or Trick-Room-adjacent builds, not raw Speed[5].
A fully-invested Timid Greninja clears every one of them, including Sneasler, the fastest Pokémon in that top-used group. It only loses the race to the small handful of dedicated Speed-tier legendaries — Dragapult (142 base), Chien-Pao and Flutter Mane (135 base), Iron Bundle (136 base) — none of which are currently top-8 in Reg M-B usage. Against the format most players are actually facing, “outpaces most of the meta” isn’t a marketing line. It’s the literal Speed column.
Choice Scarf changes the picture further: a Scarfed Timid Greninja hits 565 at level 100, clearing Dragapult outright. The trade-off is losing the ability to switch moves — covered in the moveset breakdown below.
Two Movesets That Actually Work
Greninja’s moveset splits into two builds that solve different problems, and running the wrong one for your team is the single most common mistake in Greninja sets we’ve seen.
Set 1: Water Shuriken Priority
Moves: Water Shuriken, Dark Pulse, Ice Beam, Surf or Hydro Pump
Item: Life Orb or Focus Sash
Role: Cleanup and revenge-killing
Water Shuriken is a 15-base-power move with +1 priority that hits 2–5 times — 35% chance of 2 hits, 35% of 3, 15% each of 4 or 5 — for an average effective power around 46.5, close to a full-power STAB move, but it goes first regardless of Speed[6]. That’s the answer for the one matchup Greninja’s Speed can’t solve: an opposing Pokémon that’s already faster, or a team running Tailwind or Trick Room. Priority doesn’t care what the Speed stat says.
Set 2: Mixed Coverage Attacker
Moves: Hydro Pump, Ice Beam or Dark Pulse, U-turn, Gunk Shot or Rock Slide
Item: Choice Scarf
Nature: Jolly if leaning on the physical half (Gunk Shot, Rock Slide), Timid if leaning special
Role: Guaranteed-first-strike nuke with unpredictable typing
This is the set Game8’s own Pokémon Champions guide recommends as Greninja’s Choice Scarf option[7], and Protean is what makes it work: every move in the four-move slot gets a same-type bonus regardless of Greninja’s actual typing, so a scouting opponent can’t safely switch into “the Water move” or “the Ice move” — all four hit like same-type attacks. The cost is Choice Scarf’s lock-in: pick wrong and you’re stuck.
| Situation | Run This Set | Avoid If |
|---|---|---|
| Facing faster threats or Tailwind/Trick Room teams | Water Shuriken Priority | Your team already has reliable priority or Speed control elsewhere |
| Need a guaranteed early-turn hit with type-coverage on Turn 1 | Mixed Coverage (Choice Scarf) | You need to pivot move-to-move mid-battle — Choice items can’t |
EVs and the Nature/Item Decision Together
For the Water Shuriken set: 252 Speed / 252 Sp. Atk / 4 HP, Timid, Life Orb. The 4 HP is a rounding-number dump, not a real defensive investment — nothing about 4 EVs changes Greninja’s survivability against anything that already 2HKOs it. For the Mixed Coverage set: the same 252/252/4 split, but Choice Scarf replaces Life Orb, and the nature follows whichever attacking stat carries more of the four moves. Don’t split EVs between Attack and Special Attack on either set — Protean means every move already gets a same-type bonus, so the deciding factor is which stat a given move actually uses, not some blended average.
Which Build Fits Which Player
| Player Type | Priority |
|---|---|
| New player | Catch or breed any Greninja — Protean is guaranteed since Battle Bond can’t be obtained normally. Run the Water Shuriken set; priority forgives Speed-EV mistakes while you’re still learning the format. |
| Casual player | Timid, Life Orb, Water Shuriken set. Four moves, one item, no Choice-lock decisions to second-guess mid-battle. |
| Hardcore / optimizer | Run the exact Speed-tier math against your specific format’s top 10 (see the table above) before locking a nature, and weigh Choice Scarf’s 565 Speed against Life Orb’s flexibility per matchup, not by default. |
| Completionist | Track down a 6IV Timid Protean Froakie for breeding, and check our Shiny Odds Explained guide if you’re hunting a Shiny — Battle Bond Greninja can’t be bred or shiny-hunted at all, so a Shiny Protean line is the only version of this Pokémon a modern player can actually chase. |
FAQ
Is Battle Bond ever worth using if I already own one?
Not for Pokémon Champions — it’s flatly banned from that format, so owning one doesn’t change what you build for ranked play. It’s still legal on Pokémon Showdown’s Gen 9 OU simulator, which is why OU usage stats show it dominating; if you’re building specifically for Showdown rather than Champions, the +1 Atk/SpA/Spe on KO is a genuine one-time snowball effect worth using. For everyone building toward the actual in-game competitive mode, it’s a moot question — you can’t queue with it.
Why not just run Jolly on every Greninja to keep both offensive stats intact?
Because most Greninja sets aren’t mixed. On a pure special attacker, Jolly protects an Attack stat you’re not using while doing nothing for the Special Attack stat that’s actually dealing damage. Jolly only earns its keep on the Mixed Coverage set, where Attack-based moves like Gunk Shot or Rock Slide are pulling real weight.
Does Protean still make Greninja immune to its own weaknesses while attacking?
Only in the sense that its typing changes to the move being used before that move resolves — it doesn’t grant immunity to the incoming hit that follows on the opponent’s turn. A Greninja that just used Ice Beam is Ice-type until it acts again, which can matter against a revenge-killer carrying a Fighting-type move. It’s a same-type-bonus tool, not a defensive shield, and treating it as the latter is how a supposedly safe Greninja play ends in a KO.
Sources
- Bulbapedia — Greninja (Pokémon)
- Bulbapedia — Battle Bond (Ability)
- Game8 — Can You Get Battle Bond Greninja (Ash Greninja)? (Pokémon Scarlet/Violet)
- Pikalytics — Greninja Pokémon Champions VGC 2026 Preview
- ShowdownTier — VGC 2026 Regulation M-B (Pokémon Champions) Tier List
- Bulbapedia — Water Shuriken (move)
- Game8 — Greninja Movesets and Best Builds (Pokémon Champions)
- Pikalytics — Greninja Gen 9 OU Stats
Verified against Pokémon Champions Regulation M-B usage data and Gen 9 mechanics as of August 2026. Ability distributions and tier usage shift by season — recheck current Pikalytics data before a major tournament.
I've been playing video games for over 20 years, spanning everything from early PC titles to modern open-world games. I started Switchblade Gaming to publish the kind of accurate, well-researched guides I always wanted to find — built on primary sources, tested in-game, and kept up to date after patches. I currently focus on Minecraft and Pokémon GO.