I've recently played a lot of matches against some of my friends who use Villager. The ledge camping strategy certainly takes some work but it really wasn't hard for them emulate ADHD's gameplay, especially since standard Villager can incorporate similar ledge play with Fair and fully grown trees. I played with a variety of characters and noted down my results, hopefully you'll find them useful.
- The frog doesn't have as bad of a time with this as people say. Water Shuriken and Shifting Shuriken both outrange Villager's Fair, and any exploding balloons Villager sends toward the stage. Both projectiles can hit him on the ledge. To dispell some myths, you do not need to fully charge Water Shuriken to hit Villager on the ledge, you can hit him with
literally any level of charge besides totally uncharged. So you can hurl 5% damaging Shurikens at him pretty quickly and easily hit him on the ledge. Shifting Shuriken is not as useful in this MU because it doesn't pull Villager towards you when he's on the ledge and has more ending lag than the default. The main thing you have to watch out for is pocket, but Villager can only pocket one at a time and partially charged Shurikens aren't too threatening. Hydro Pump can be useful too because it can hit Villager when he goes above the stage and push him away, but it's harder to outrange Fair. Something else you can do as a mixup is jump over villager and Hydro Pump upward so that you can hit him, similar to how Bowser Jr. can hit him with the exploding Clown Car. You don't get much damage out of that though and are usually better off pressuring with Shurikens. I won well over 50% of my matches against this strategy with Greninja but in fairness I think this could get harder for him with more cerebral use of the Lloid Rocket.
- Obviously I'm nowhere near as good as Tweek but by emulating some of his strategies I found Bowser Jr. to be quite successful. My issue with Bowjow is that he lacks the tools to hit Villager while he's actually hanging on the ledge, which is crucial since the biggest weakness of Villager's ledge camping is probably the fact that subsequent ledge snaps lock him into a vulnerable animation with no invincibility.
- Tons of options here. His reflector can send Lloids hurtling back and he can angle his arrows to hit Villager on the ledge. Arrows also outrange Villager massively. Note that Dark Pit isn't as effective against Villager because it's harder to angle his arrows to hit him. However it is still possible, and Dark Pit's arrows deal more damage so if you can consistently hit Villager with Dark Pit's arrows he might be the better choice.
- Sheik kinda destroys Villager up close but has trouble forcing him off the ledge. Default needles are good if you can fully charge them, then full jump and fire them at Villager from the stage. You can follow up with Bouncing Fish at high percents as a true kill combo. Sheik has powerful aerials and it's not out of the question to simply jump off stage and hit Villager with Nair and Bair, but of course you have to be wary of Villager's own offstage game which is pretty strong. Bouncing Fish can hit Villager on or around the ledge but be VERY careful of using it, if he reads it and airdodges he can smack you with a Dair if he ends up above you. Works best as a surprise option. I think Sheik is limited by this strategy similar to Diddy.
- Spamming default Thunder Jolt gives Villager a lot of trouble. It's really quite simple. You saw Jtails beat ADHD consistently, I was able to win by emulating the same strategy. You can use Thunder Wave as well but you have to be more careful because it's laggier, has less range and doesn't deal as much damage. You get great follow-ups at higher percents though. Heavy Skull Bash is also an asset in this MU when the trip sapling isn't in play.
- Struggles a lot with this. No projectiles at all, and while he can hit Villager off the ledge pretty easily it's very hard for him to get through the trip sapling and (to a lesser extent) Lloids. Nado can plow through stuff but it's pretty punishable in this game and you probably won't hit Villager with it if he hangs out carefully below the stage. It's hard to pick him up off the ledge with it. MK doesn't get much help from customs either.
- Also troubled. Ganon not only lacks projectiles, he lacks mobility and attacks that can hit villager on the ledge. Wizard's Dropkick is his best asset for approaching and maybe hitting villager, but Ganon really doesn't have many options here.
That's it for the characters I've tried so far, I plan to test out my other characters (
,
and
) soon. Hopefully some of you found a few of my observations helpful.
