Articuno carves out a niche on stall teams being a secondary hazard remover (covering almost every rocker in tandem with Xatu) and having access to Heal Bell while being able to - yes - pressure stall Pokemon like Vanilluxe. Articuno has seen some tourplay aswell recently where it did a good job. I also don't think the Agility + Flyinium Z has gotten any worse since after a boost it's able to threaten most of the Pokemon ranked in the As.
Can't agree with this one. As someone testing out stall, the hazard game is an impossible one to play, and if anything you are crippling yourself more with cuno + defogger than with just one defogger. First of all, xatu as a partner is highly debatable, because its very easy to force out with most stealth rockers, and losing to sneasel is a huge deal when trapping is one of the best forms of hazard control (it's also why i dont support a sneasel drop). Cuno is incredibly pressured when it takes damage from hazards, and with xatu it will not be hard to let stealth rocks slip past you. Taking druddigon for instance, an offensive set will absolutely crush xatu, even without mold breaker. There are also like 3 mold breakers with rocks that are viable in the tier. Even rockers like steelix have a relatively easy time pressuring xatu. Anyway, this all culminates into articuno inevitably being faced with stealth rocks, and honestly after taking half damage, it is incredibly easy to wear down, and checks nothing, barely even checks vanilluxe. Heal bell alone barely makes this thing good, but as a specially defensive pokemon audino is better, and pressure would only be worth justifying against voltturn builds, yet the mon obviously cant deal with volt switch.
This is just one of those noms that in a vacuum makes sense, yet looking at the context of a real stall game, it will never be good. I would advocate for a sub-roost or offensive set before a defensive one, which honestly has merit enough to be in C- or whatever, but I honestly think the stall argument doesn't work, and this thing is hanging on by a thread with niche sets. Actually I take it all back, a defog set is enough to rank it because defoggers in this tier suck, basically. But i still dont like the stall argument. It's also still a really bad fogger.
This is a decent enough segway into an important factor: Hazard control.
Sneasel: To remain in A+
Sneasel still excels at one thing: trapping. This alone is honestly good enough to the point where it opens the flood gates for tons of other pokemon, hence my upcoming noms. No other pokemon can prove itself good against offense, with ice shard + speed, and good against defense, with knock off, while all in all proving itself to inadvertently be the greatest support mon in the tier, even without status moves. Pursuit trapping + knock off spam is honestly the first thing I and most people think about when we start building, and this just shows the impact on the meta sneasel has. In spite of any meta changes that occur, it continues to be the swiss army knife of NU, and its A+ perfectly reflects that.
Masquerain: Rank
This obviously derives from the previous thing, but essentially a webs setter with offensive presence is somewhat of a niche. You dont have to let garbodor setup 3 layers of spikes as you do with shuckle. With ice beam, xatu's capability of stopping webs is questionable.
Garbodor: Rise
This has the same amount of sets that most S rank mons do, which is insane. You can run so many different things that all create a melting pot of disaster for teams who dont prepare for it. It pressures xatu too, which means you dont even need to use sneasel. It's probably the second thing i think about when making my teams.
Lurantis: ???
On stall, after some tests, it is decent but has no offensive presense because leaf storm is pretty easy to switch into (maybe you could use another move idk). On a more balanced team, it might serve to be a good defogger, which my god this tier has none of, so maybe it should rise.
Seperate from hazard control...
Samurott: Remain
A mon that can pressure both offense and defense is pretty huge, as well as its ability to run surprising sets. With taunt you dont even need to setup and can comfotably beat pyuku, possibly even with sub grass knot. This is still a great pokemon.
Medicham: Rise
This is very hard to check. Even with slowbro, which is honestly really good rn because it is a wincon for stall, well it still cant really beat medicham. Although this is very one dimensional, something that can break though virtually anything doesnt need to be extravagant.
Edit:
Cinccino to rise to about B. B- is questionable for a mon that is really fast, beats sash leads, and overall has a lot of offensive pressure to the point where stall teams have to run dedicated checks.
There's honestly too much else to talk about.