Contest Greninja vs Samurott

[Zeb]

I'll go with Samurott. After the new toy syndrome wore off I became less enamoured with Greninja (and the opposite is true for Samurott - took me a long time to warm to it). I still like Greninja, but I'm kinda tired of it (in the same way I'm tired of Charizard, Lucario, Aegislash, Talonflame etc). Samurott became one of my favourite Pokemon leading from Gen V into Gen VI, so I'm glad I saved my vote until now. Not that I preferred Greninja, they were sort of tied in my mind and I found it hard to decide.

I think Samurott gets too much hate personally. It looks cool and has a neat concept, plus it redeems the awful, ugly mess of a design that is Oshawott (at least Froakie is super cute). Its stats could be better and I'm still disappointed it wasn't part Fighting, but it makes up for it in other ways for me. Greninja is pretty cool, but like I said, I've just grown tired of it already.

 

[Ice Tyrant]

Whose design do you prefer? A close one here with Greninja being the better of the two. Samurott is not bad, just not as perfect as Greninja is.


Who has the better pre-evolutions? Greninja. It's a three stage Amphibian based evolution line that doesn't result in the Pokemon becoming fat in some way.


Who would win? Greninja. Protean Grass Knot effortless destroys Samurott before it has a chance to move.


Who do you prefer? Greninja. Greninja was already predicted to be my favorite of the Kalos Starters when it's line was first announced as Froakie at the time of X/Y's announcement. Then Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS cemented Greninja as being my favorite Water Starter ever.

 

[Rainami]

Whose design do you prefer? greninja

Who has the better pre-evolutions? greninja

Who would win? Really, it depends on mindgames, what set each is running, etc. Greninja wins if it has grass knot, but if it doesn't than it's forced to use other moves. If greninja leads with hydro pump and samu uses a water attack, greninja can just finish it off with dark pulse or somefin the next turn. But samu can predict that and use grass knot which it's very likely to run, or if it's physical samu it can megahorn and just kill with aqua jet (again assuming it has lorb). Course, grenina could just predict that and go for gunk shot or whatever....geez, I'm done, you get what I mean. I think I'm obsessed with damage calcs.

Who do you prefer? greninja

greninja looks cooler to me, samurott isn't bad but it's probably one of my least favorite water starters anyway.

 

[Norzan]

Samurott has to be the least interesting starter to me, to the point i forget it exists sometimes. Greninja wins by default, it's probably the starter that grew on me the most, from not liking it into being one of my favourite starters.

 

[PaulTheProtist]

Yes, I get that Greninja's much better competitively, but I like Samurott much better. I don't see what's so great with Greninja, without Protean, it's nothing. Furthermore, it's a special-based Dark attacker (sorry, you're three gens too late for that) and has a very limited movepool of Dark moves nonetheless. I ended up ditching him from my team, which is the first time I ditched a starter (well, unless you count DP, but that was more "someone stole my starter from me without my consent").

I bet someone here will retort everything I just said...

 

[JustACollector]

-Design wise I will go with greninja. It looks more thought out and drawn with thought given into how the name and the pokemon goes into design.

-Again greninja. Its pre forms as a whole leadup to what I was expecting the final from to look like. Samurott’s pre forms give a different feel for what the final form would/should have looked like.

-I do not know. I would choose Samurott but that’s a biased choice.

-I’ve never played XY but greninja looks more BA.

 

[Dr. Buni]

Easily Samurott. Greninja's design isn't bad (though it is the least interesting Gen VI starter), but I don't like frogs and I like ninjas even less.

 

[GhostFingers]

Samurott. It's got decent bulk and is overall balanced as opposed to Greninja's sweeper niche.

Besides, I find Oshawott to be too cute.

 

[Camille]

Like them both, but I'll go with Samurott. It has a better design, and Greninja is rather overexposed, and I've never liked Ash-Greninja.

 

[Isaac the Investigator]

It took a while for me to warm up for it but I'll go with Greninja, mainly for the Protean sets that can carry a lot of utility for offensive teams. Samurott's stats and movepool on the other hand seems like it doesn't know what it wants to do. And while the other Unova starters improve considerably with their hidden abilities, Samurott does not.