is there a way to change the ordering of resources when deleting? I currently can't destroy a stack due to a resource being in use by another resource

If you have dependencies between resources, they will be deleted in reverse dependency order. That dependency should in general have been necessary to get into this situation in the first place (else you could have had issues creating your stack if the thing using the other thing ended up being created first). Abstractly - dependencies are what you want here - but the details of your particular situation may matter for the exact answer.

ah ok, had to create an azure vmss outside of Pulumi in order to use a proximity placement group so that's what probably caused the odd ordering deletion issue.