Villager (SSBU)/Neutral special

This article or section may require competitive expertise.
You can discuss this issue on the talk page or edit this page to improve it.

Hitbox visualization showing Villager's neutral special, Pocket.

Overview[edit]

Villager reaches their hand out and pockets projectiles.

Pocket is a powerful anti-projectile move, as a captured projectile's damage is multiplied by 1.9. However, despite the incredible damage multiplier, Pocket is mainly used to take away single-use items such as R.O.B.s Gyro, Diddy Kongs Banana Peel, Links Remote Bomb, and Bowser Jr.s Mechakoopa. Pocketing a single-use item substantially tilts the game in Villager's favor, and can severely impair characters, especially Diddy Kong, who heavily relies on his banana for camping and KO setups. The pocketed item remains in Villager's possession for the duration of their stock, forcing characters with single-use items to use caution when throwing them towards Villager.

Pocket can also be used as a surrogate air dodge thanks to its brief intangibility briefly before and during the grab portion of the move, which can be used in combination with B-reversing for mobility mixups. However, the move is somewhat laggy when whiffed.

Overall, Pocket is a very polarizing move, being very powerful and forcing a degree of respect from the opponent, lest they lose their item; however, in some matchups, it is almost useless beyond being a surrogate air dodge.