cricketlaxwolvesbandy
Summoning...
First to do E4 feats?I would argue that Ash Greninja scales above his Journey team.
Firstly, Ash Greninja is a rather special pokemon compared to most of Ash's team. Some reason for the same being,
1) This is the first of Ash's aces that have been outright released (Without any callback option).
2) Additionally, it is the first of Ash's aces to have a unique connection/bond with Ash which you could argue also surpassed Ash's bond with "Pikachu" in a way, due to the entire nature of the transformation and how it worked. The real reason I think why it wasn't Oak'd and was left in Kalos.
3) It is a special phenomenon entirely exclusive to Ash which nobody else in the world has.
4) It is the first of Ash's Pokemon to actually bring him close to achieving Elite Four-tier feats in his career as a trainer which was a very big deal before Journeys.
5) In the Lucario training episode, we see Greninja effortlessly clown Lucario and the latter was strong enough to defeat Raihan's ace in its base form after a short training session with Greninja.
Given this special status of AG and its performance in the recent episode, I would like to think that AG is arguably Ash's strongest Pokemon. I think Pikachu and Lucario are strong contenders to take this title, but this would depend on their feats in the upcoming Master Class tournament. If Pikachu defeats Mega Metagross and goes on to defeat Leon's Charizard (On it's own), or Lucario goes on to defeat Cynthia's Garchomp and Leon's Charizard, this might change.
As for the rest of Ash's base team (Including the rest of his aces), I'm going to go against the rest of the commenters and say that they are a cut below his Journey's team.
Firstly, I believe that the reserves will be scaled exponentially from their previous feats and will be good enough to achieve Elite four tier/Regional Champion tier feats (Based on Ash's progression), however, based on a particular reason in "Episode 114", I am going to argue that his Journey's team are a cut above.
When Paul and Ash decided to battle, the former laid down a condition that he wanted Ash to only use the Pokemon that he would be using in the Master Class Tournament. Knowing Paul's character, to me, this suggested that he wanted to test Ash's best pokemon.
If Paul just wanted to train Ash, he would've just said 3v3 battle with no exchanges and used the aces of the MC. However, the fact that he explicitly stated that condition, suggests that Paul wanted to test Ash at his best and the fact that Ash used his Journey's team, suggests that they are a cut above his regular reserves (With the exception of AG).
Laughs in Charizard, Pikachu, Snorlax, and Sceptile
Ash-Greninja Mastered wasn’t that impressive besides somehow clowning on Diantha when it wasn’t fully mastered
Yes it went toe to toe with MCX but it doesn’t matter since it lost