But sometimes, just sometimes, the meta doesn’t change because of a developer decision. It changes because a player discovers something crazy. Something the devs probably didn’t even mean to exist.

And in competitive Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, there’s no better example than Greninja.

Greninja, The Perfect Yet Broken Character

On paper, Greninja has it all.

• Insane speed
• Great combos
• Strong kill setups
• Lethal edgeguarding
• Sleek ninja vibes

Sounds top-tier, right? Except… there was one major problem.

Greninja had no good out-of-shield option.
Meaning, if he blocked an attack, he couldn’t punish it. Most characters can just pop out an attack right after shielding. Greninja? He just sat there like, “Please leave.”

That one flaw kept him from breaking into the top tier. He was strong, sure, but not reliable under pressure.

Enter The Footstool Tech

A few years ago, players found a weird trick. You could do a footstool jump out of shield. That’s where you literally jump on your opponent’s head after blocking a move.

It’s fast. One of the fastest out-of-shield options in the game.

The catch? It didn’t really do anything on its own. You jumped on their head, they got slightly annoyed, and then the match continued like nothing happened. Cool, but not game-changing.

Until someone realized, “Wait a second, what if you can attack right after the footstool?”

Turns out, some characters could follow it up with an aerial, Greninja being one of them. And not just any aerial. His down-air out of footstool turned out to be ridiculously good.

Tarik, The Greninja Who Flipped the Script

Enter Tarik, widely considered the best Greninja in the world and Germany’s top Smash Ultimate player.

He started using footstool out-of-shield into down-air like it was nothing. And suddenly, Greninja’s biggest weakness became a massive strength.

• If the down-air hit, Tarik got a full combo
• If it missed or got blocked, Greninja just hopped away safely
• It was fast, stylish, and totally unique to Greninja

This wasn’t just a cool trick, it was a meta-shifting discovery.

A move that once left Greninja helpless now gave him pressure, defense, and combo potential, all thanks to one player digging deep into the game’s mechanics.

Final Stock

This kind of stuff is what makes competitive Smash so special. No patch, no dev update, no announcement. Just players, experimenting, grinding, pushing the game beyond its limits.

Tarik didn’t just level up Greninja, he changed how the entire community sees the character. And maybe the devs didn’t intend it, but that’s the beauty of Smash, the game keeps evolving because of the players.

Sometimes, being a ninja just means jumping on someone’s head and ruining their whole strategy.