I haven't seen a Cradily in a while, and you could argue the metagame is a bit less favorable for it atm. There are less Semi-Stall/Bulky Defense teams and most Offenses carry a solid way to deal with it (Metagross, Infernape, Lucario, Breloom and the currently quite popular SD Scizor). I still think it's a solid team choice and deserving of a team spot if you carefully build around it imo.
Anyway, regarding what you said about Hard Stall: I actually share your feelings regarding the playstyle
in general. Not only in DPP. I think Hard Stall is bad and match-up reliant in every generations. As you mentionned it, a Hard Stall aims to play riskfree and kinda net the win through good match-up. That's why a lot of players like it: if the match-up is in your favor, you're likely gonna win with ease.
I have two main problems with Hard Stall as a playstyle, in every gen:
- While it's true that a good match-up is probably gonna net you the win with ease, I also strongly think a bad match-up is likely gonna mean that you're gonna have 0 chance at winning. Stall Teams are too passive and lack the options to take a different approach or take the lead if they're in a bad spot, which leads to unwinnable match-ups.
- If you use Hard Stall, you keep relying on your Pokemons in a defensive way, which means one crit or hax turn and you're in a world of trouble (possibly unrecovable) like in your example. The thing is it's likely to happen as the game drags on (after all, the chance of a crit happening is 1 out of 16, and if you keep switching into offensive attacks, it's gonna happen at some point).
Regarding the first point, I'll use some examples that served me as hard lessons in the past.
During SPL 3, in BW1, I was running what I liked the most at the time: a Hard Rain Stall. It featured Politoed, Gastrodon, Skarmory, Tentacruel, Chansey and Mew. I faced SD Heracross with Fighting Gem and a NP Recover Celebi in that game, paired with a bulky Starmie and I had actually 0 way to win that game. The same thing happened in other occasions where I ran Rain Stall and faced a combination of Wobbuffet + CB Ttar. A Hard Stall team always aim at covering every (combination of) threat(s) defensively, but it's impossible to do so, even in DPP. Magnezone, Dugtrio, CB Tyranitar, NP Togekiss, CM Clefable etc, I feel like Full Stall is actually too risky because there are too much Anti-Stall options in every tiers, and you rely on match-up more than with any other playstyle.
Regarding the second point, I think there isn't much to explain, but let's say Hippowdon is your only way to deal with DD Tyranitar, you're one freeze away from a (most likely unrecovable) loss. Bliss is one also one freeze away from a CM Clefable sweep. Rotom-H is one miss away from preventing a Bulky Scizor sweep. The list goes on.
Finally, there is an another issue with Hard Stall, and I call it the "hazard match-up", aka the direct match-up between your Hazards Setters in your team and the opposite Spinner, as well as your Spinner match-up with the opposite Hazards Setters.
Say your Stall answer to Infernape/SD Scizor is Gyarados, your Spinner Forretress and the opposite Rocker Heatran, it's likely you're gonna have to play Rocks up for a while. Which means your opponent has the tools to hard pressure your Scizor answer through double-switches and the like (or can just spam Banded Close Combat with Infernape once Gyarados is under ~65-70% with Rocks up). It can even be worse if you face, say HP Fire Tspikes Roserade with BulkyStarmie or Forretress as your spinner and without carrying a Tspikes absorber on your own.
In the same way, if you face Bold Starmie with Skarmory/Hippowdon as your Hazards Setters, keeping Hazards up will be difficult (especially if they have a Pursuiter for your Rotom, if you even carry one). Without Hazards, Stall teams have a ton of trouble even breaking through defensive cores with recovery options.
Add to that the plethora of good Taunt users to deal with (Gliscor, Skarmory, etc), the Trickers and even the Sleepers (Breloom, Roserade mainly, which means one of your Pokemon is off unless it has Sleep Talk, in which case it becomes unreliable because of the very nature of Sleep Talk) and you could understand why I think Hard Stall is bad/too match-up reliant in literally every single tiers and generations.