Other Choice Specs Meloetta Bulky Offence by MZ - Tournament Feature

[RMT Staff]

Introduction
Looking to solidify their spot in Grand Slam XIII’s playoffs stage, many of Smogon’s household names signed up for PU Open VII. In the end, SoulWind stood above the rest and won this year’s edition of the PU tournament. SoulWind is a very decorated player, so victory for him isn’t too surprising, but managing to win while only using publicly available teams is impressive to say the least.

This RMT highlights likely the most recognizable team from SoulWind’s Open run, a bulky offensive team featuring Choice Specs Meloetta made by PU veteran and council member MZ. Both MZ’s team and SoulWind’s play can largely be credited for popularizing Meloetta, which wasn’t looked upon as fondly as other wallbreakers prior to PU Open. The team also showcases many staples of the summer 2024 PU metagame in Assault Vest Galarian Slowbro, Bellibolt, Arcanine, and Bombirdier.


Bellibolt @ Rocky Helmet
Ability: Static
Tera Type: Flying
EVs: 252 HP / 252 Def / 4 SpD
Bold Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Toxic
- Slack Off
- Volt Switch
- Muddy Water
​

Near-standard Bellibolt as the physical blanket, this was in a meta where you didn't need much more than him and at worse you should be trading with or paralyzing the things too strong to wall like Staraptor. Tera Flying wasn't and isn't nearly as common as Water, but I didn't feel the need for the Fire/Water resist here given the remaining teammates and fully dodging some EQs could be pretty good.

Arcanine @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Intimidate
Tera Type: Normal
EVs: 160 HP / 252 Atk / 96 Spe
Adamant Nature
- Curse
- Morning Sun
- Extreme Speed
- Flare Blitz
​

Main sweeper and wincon with its standard Curse set, blanket checks and revenge kills a large portion of the tier. One of the biggest issues for the team was fast Tera Ghost mons because of its reliance on Arcanine sweeping. They weren't as popular when the team was made and most successful, but over time you saw a lot more fast mons running it purely to stop things like Arcanine. Tera Ghost Inteleon is particularly devastating, and because it was simultaneously the less popular choice and still pretty common it made that mon into a guessing game.

Meloetta @ Choice Specs
Ability: Serene Grace
Tera Type: Ghost
EVs: 252 SpA / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Modest Nature
IVs: 0 Atk
- Hyper Voice
- Psychic
- Shadow Ball
- Alluring Voice​

This is pretty much just standard Meloetta as the main breaker. It has other options like Psyshock > Psychic, Focus or Tbolt over Alluring, or Timid, but it's the only real breaker here so I prioritized max power and trying to always have at least one solid neutral coverage move.

Altaria @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Natural Cure
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 SpD
Careful Nature
- Defog
- Roost
- Brave Bird
- Roar​

PU had a lot of easily blocked spinners with relatively little Defog options, I started using more Altaria when Houndstone Spikes was feeling too oppressive. It blanket checks a large portion of the tier, especially Fire/Water Tauros and Glowbro. Roar over Wisp is better for forcing out opposing Arcanine until it's the last mon and being generally annoying, especially if you can get some rocks and knocks.

Bombirdier @ Heavy-Duty Boots
Ability: Big Pecks
Tera Type: Ground
EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe
Jolly Nature
- Stealth Rock
- Roost
- Knock Off
- Brave Bird
​

Pretty much standard Bombirdier, not really able to fit Sucker Punch but still does its job in Rocking and doing some mid-strength breaking. Often sacrifices itself to cripple an opposing Skunk or Mudsdale or something along those lines, it's rarely needed to last too long but Roost is there for the matchups where you really want it late-game. I opted for Tera Ground because the team has no Volt Switch immunity and occasionally you'll need it, things like Scarf Toxtricity were less common so I felt comfortable giving that up but it helps that the only Electric-weak mon on the team can sometimes choose not to be that.

Slowbro-Galar @ Assault Vest
Ability: Regenerator
Tera Type: Water
EVs: 248 HP / 128 Def / 128 SpD / 4 Spe
Relaxed Nature
- Psychic
- Shell Side Arm
- Flamethrower
- Earthquake
​

Necessary to check the remaining 25% of the meta that you can sort of pivot around but really need a fat regen mon to help out with. The last two slots keep you more solid against Steels that force Meloetta into annoying predictions and opposing Glowbro so you can win the 1v1 vs non-EQ AV sets.

Threats​

Tera Ghost Inteleon: Inteleon in general was a huge problem for the team, outspeeding every member and applying heavy pressure if it predicted correctly. With Tera Ghost, however, it also became immune to Arcanine’s Extreme Speed, which made it a chore to revenge kill. Tera Ghost was much less common than Tera Water, though, and both Galarian Slowbro and Altaria could Terastallize to tank Inteleon’s attacks and defeat it.

Taunt Skuntank/Bombirdier: With careful play and Taunt to shut down Arcanine and two of the team’s walls, both Dark-types could prove annoying for this team. The team’s reliance on two Psychic-types also didn’t help here. That said, Skuntank and Bombirdier really did have to be careful with Bellibolt around to chip and potentially paralyze them. They also weren’t too keen on switching in against Galarian Slowbro’s coverage or strong attacks from Meloetta and Arcanine.

Anti-Altaria Pressure: While Galarian Slowbro and Bellibolt were capable of fighting back against Pokemon that switched into them, Altaria was too passive to do much against its switch-ins, especially without Will-O-Wisp. Defensively, a notable Pokemon that could annoy Altaria was Coalossal, which kept entry hazards up against it and even sometimes threatened it with Power Gem.

Paste:

The Team in Action​

Semis vs TheFranklin: - Replay

TheFranklin’s team aims to stack entry hazards and punish removal attempts with Houndstone and Competitive Kilowattrel. “Houndstack”, as some call it, was a common structure, and while MZ partly chose Altaria to avoid dealing with Houndstone, Kilowattrel could have proved annoying for SoulWind if he let hazards go up and carelessly used Defog. With careful piloting on SoulWind’s part, however, the team’s solid defensive core weathered TheFranklin’s assault. Bellibolt and Arcanine were able to win thanks to Meloetta scoring KOes against Gastrodon and Coalossal, keeping SoulWind’s run alive after he lost game one of the set.

Finals vs Star: - Replay

PU Open VII’s finals took place in a slightly new meta, with Copperajah now in the tier. Could MZ’s team still achieve victory with the elephant around to pressure its walls and notably check Meloetta? Game one of SoulWind’s set against Star even featured Inteleon on the other side, a huge threat if Star clicked as well as he had been the whole tour. SoulWind managed to deal with the aquatic sniper through a timely Tera Water by Altaria as well as Meloetta, giving Arcanine a clear win path in what ended up being an incredibly close victory.

Congratulations to SoulWind for winning PU Open VII. Thank you to MZ for building the team and to everyone for reading this far!

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Credits:
Team and team explanation by: MZ
Additional writing by: asa
Incredible art by: DaWolfKid
Formatting by: TheDuckChris