so after a whole day of playing around with some pokemon, there were two NFE's that stood out as interesting, and imo stall is looking much more viable as a playstyle when you take them into account.
Say hello to the best spinner in the PU tier, why is it the best spinner you ask? well its simple
It reliably beats a lot of the Stealth Rock setters in the PU metagame With good physical bulk further boosted by eviolite, ground typing to tank head smashes (protip: sandshrew cannot be 2hkod by rampardos head smash, even with adamant CB). Earthquake, and rapid spin, most rock setters such as gigalith, rampardos, shitang, and lairon dont stand a chance against the little shrew, failing pathetically at trying to knock it out, while watching their rocks get spun away at the end. Now sandshrew isnt helpless against spinblockers either! it hits lampent on the switch with a STAB earthquake, while using knock off or toxic on frillish, crippling it for the rest of the match. (it also has super fang if you can find room for it!) He might not be bad in NU tbh, im going to test him out a bit.
laugh, laugh all you want, but skorupi actually works surprisingly well in PU. You may think, "what does this piece of shit have as a toxic spiker over whirlipede". Well heres your answer.
Unlike Whirlipede, Skorupi is not complete set up bait for a shitload of things that can change the tide of the match in one turn, especially linoone.
Why is this? Skorupi has access to several distruptive moves that prevent various threats and stallbreakers from setting up all over it.the first of which is
Taunt, slower threats such as restalk DD shelgon, throh, and scraggy can no longer set up in your face, being forced to switch or attack, and with 40/90 defense boosted by eviolite, skorupi can take its fair share of unboosted hits and cripple the opponent with its other moves. Now you may be wondering "how does taunt stop linoone when skorupi is slower?" The answer is... it doesnt! but
Whirlwind does! so skorupi is face to face with a dragon dancer or swords dancer that is too fast to be taunted, Skorupi flails its tiny claws and forces them to switch out, thus erasing any and every stat boost they may have collected, Hopefully you Whirlwind out a pokemon skorupi can wall and set up toxic spikes on, meaning that said set up sweeper will be put on a timer when it comes in again, making it much easier to deal with. Lastly, Skorupi also has access to
Knock Off, to cripple defensive pokemon by removing their leftovers/eviolite, it doesnt hurt against some offensive pokemon that carry LO either, softening their hits to help make them more managable for the rest of your team. If knock off isnt your cup of tea, skorupi can always run Toxic to threaten stall teams with a combination of toxic, toxic spikes, and a fairly fast taunt. Or run something like idk x-scissor to hit frail shit thats weak to it and probably still not KO, but hey, not like whirlipede could do any better right?
EDIT: because fuck crits, skorupi also has battle armor to prevent them :]
anyways, if using either of these pokemon, things like audino and eviolite lickitung are good partners to take special hits and provide wish support/heal status, probably wont be hard to fit a wishpasser in because you are probably running them on semi stall/full stall anyway.