Counterpoint: Tana is cute

'I don't want anyone going broke over fire emblem' - Dani Doyle pushing against FEH's Dev Intentions like a boss

I love how Tana’s good growths let her essentially become a heat seeking missile if you invest in her

"Tana is technically better at the same level of investment" is all I needed to hear. Bye bye Vanessa 👋👋

Another advantage of using the Tower? Some enemies in the tower's later floors have a chance of dropping promotion items

The elysian whip problem is fixed by giving Tana the master seal you get in the final map /j

As someone who has benched Vanessa in basically every single run of the game I've made because she refuses to hit Strength while Tana comes with a good chunk of it at base plus a better growth, I admit I was not expecting this I actually went back and started training my Vanessa in the postgame and she turned out, uh, Well 6 Strength and 12 Defense at Lv 10 is certainly a possibility that happened. If a confusing one.

The princess is going to ride a dragon into battle and there's nothing you can do about that.

The children yearn for the tower.... On my first (very grinded) playthrough and going into the tower with Tana multiple times, the only flier worse than her was Cyril, which isnt a high bar. Tana deserved better!

Comepletely unrelated, but in my first fe8 randomizer, Tana became an absolutely overpowered mage.

I always saw Tana as a Vanessa safeguard. As in, if you lost Vanessa on a Ironman run or If your Vanessa got really bad level ups to the point she is unusable, you will have a second flier to use that whip. To me, the second point is unusually common. I know my experiences are just that, my experiences, and I know how good is Vanessa, in theory. But I think she hates me, or I got some Vanessa curse, but I more often than not, get really screwed on her level ups. More often than not, I got a level 10+ Vanessa with WORSE stars than Tana's bases. I swear, I know it's completely against the odds, but for some weird reason, I always seem to get around 4-5 dead levels on her. Levels like only a +1 on hp or res. It's sad, really. I want to use her, but honestly I think she hates me. So I ended up using Tana more.

Heh. "Emblematic."

My Tana bias started at like 10 years old when Vanessa got killed by an archer in chapter 3. Nowadays I can admit she has serious fundamental issues, though it's all within context of the game and not about herself. She has good growths, decent bases for join level, and pegasus is a great class. But Vanessa joins SIGNIFICANTLY earlier in what's basically a dedicated training arc, and Cormag is a far better unit being this game's premier Wyvern. Yes, the average 20/20 Tana will be better than an average 20/20 Vanessa, and in a game with free farm and buyable promo items you can make the argument that every unit can be considered capable of reaching 20/20 as soon as ch14. It's perfectly viable. Play your way. It's just the contextual situation that makes Tana inviable, after all, and that context by necessity must include all available resources unless you are setting arbitrary restrictions, in which case you must admit that your restrictions make some units better than others at least somewhat arbitrarily.

tbh it was kind of surprising to see a 13 minute video about a GBA pegasus with no mention of rescue command. I get that does little when the dilemma is who to use between Tana, Vanessa and Cormag, but it is worth exploring if we ever consider the "well, you can just run all of them" answer.

This is my experience with "Tana" on both Eirika and Epharim route : - In Epharim route she is pretty much available at the start of Chapter 10 since on Chapter 9 she is pretty much a prisoner and wont see any action. Not only that , Epharim route you get Cormag on Chapter 10 and in addition to that he comes exactly to promote asap. And tough chapters are coming like Phantom Ship and Turning Traitor. She is still a very solid and good unit due to her being a flyer , good bases and great growths. For me she would mostly rank on like the lower part of "A tier" or even top of B tier. With investment she is a beast of a unit but this route does not really help her much. - In Eirika route however , Tana is actually really good. You have her at the very start of Chapter 9 , not only that but she already comes with weapons , and to top it off , Eirika route is more friendly toward fliers. On a twist , you could actually just train Tana at the beggining of Chapter 9 + gives her a bit of bulk like the dragon shield and the angelic robe , and she would reach lvl 10-12 and promote her. Players are finding ways to make Tana more viable on Eirika route and it seem that her meta is being pushed. - The other option is rather than dividing the exp between Vanessa and Franz and others , its pretty much Franz and Vanessa works as a taxi. On a speedrun this might save you a bit of time since you are basically focusing everything on Seth rather than investnig time to Vanessa. And when you get Tana , you invest on her asap and go ham on Chapter 9 since Tana comes with better bases and growths. - Tana is pretty much a unit that gets punished mainly of these two things , her availability and her "level". If she comes level 10 with those bases , she would be an instant S tier. Just to put you into perspective , a base level Tana pegasus knight can tank an Aura hit from Riev , let that sink.

she literally shows up after chapter 1, she should have just been the chapter 2 flier. logically the king probably wouldn’t want his daughter to fight grado at its strongest, but she’s a fictional character riding a horse with wings so whatever

I prefer having a Tower of Valni, and even inexperienced players getting to use the characters they like, rather than not having it and having lots of characters automatically shelved (looking at you FE10).

Nowadays I view Tana as a weird variant of an Est. She's got above average growths compared to all other gba peg knights, and her bases are also strong for her level. But Sacred Stones has such a weird fast pacing and upping the difficulty on the route split she already risk into the archetype issues in spite of joining chapter 9 that would still be relatively early in other games. But I've babied her with Ephraim chapter 9 reinforcements(and supported her with him), since she's relatively functional it's not quite so painful to get her going non-efficiently. She can do a mean snowball if you let her. Overall she seems decent enough though. I've did heard arguments before she's a bit underrated living under Vanessa's shadow, especially since that implies Vanessa is always used with early heavy investement and Tana can only be analysed as such.

The real reason Vanessa has the edge apart from availability is the extra exp gain pre route split. This is what makes training Tana feel more like a slog but on Ephraim route she has a few strengths above Vanessa. She supports Cormag. Two flyers flying side by side can wipe out the dangerous Eyes while take dropping people in strategic positions. Vanessa is often flying solo, and by Phantom Ship she's probably self sufficient through her boosters but Tana operates just fine clearing eyes with Cormag on Pure Water. I mention the support because Cormag sports the coveted Fire Affinity and Tana can easily perch behind him building increased damage just by picking off what Cormag left alive. She also gives him helpful hit, crit, and avoid making his Javelin and Killer Lance more sure.

11:04 Honestly i feel like it is possible to play a game wrong but when it happens it tends to be hilarious to see so you really don't care like for instance Excel emblem definitely played fe11 wrong but it was absolutely hilarious to see unfold ya he is playing it wrong but that's exactly why it was so good.

This is probably the best disclaimer/take on the tower of valni (especially in relation to Tana) I've ever Heard

This is so relevant to my current Sacred Stones run. My Vanessa got Str blessed and when Tana showed up (I went Ephraim route) and thought "damn, she's good, but what am I supposed to do with this?"

And then there's me, trying to use royal characters as much as possible in every FE

“Kaga intended archers to be frontline units but I turn them into bench fodder” is so funny to me

It’s been a good couple years since I’ve played Sacred Stones and was wanting to play it again but but with a twist. I am now trying out Sacred Trilogy after seeing this. I know it isn’t the main topic of the video but glad I saw it so I can try out the rom hack. Having fun with it and I’ll give Tana a good try when she shows up.

Tana actually doesn't need a promotion to contribute on Phantom Ship, give her a pure water, a vulnerary, and an iron lance and she's pretty good at training up against the Mogalls on that map

Tana is my favorite flier in FE8. She usually ends up better than Vanessa in the long term, and when your level 12 Vanessa still has 7 strength on Tana’s join chapter it’s pretty appealing to make the switch

I always use Tana. Her character is just the right amount of positive, and she has absolutely brilliant growths, that I'm willing to bench Vanessa. I also try to avoid the Tower, but I use the tower as a 'catch up' mechanic, or if I'm just grinding some supports I need to get up for endings, etc, with characters I don't use. And I never over level with the tower. I only use it to get new characters up to around the same level as everyone else. Of course, if your choice is between Mr "I kill everything in one turn" and Tana, you have to bench Tana if you had a choice. Fortunately, Vanessa can be benched, although I understand why people would use an already powered up unit over Tana.

Joining after the prologue is a gigantic potential disadvantage for everyone who does, because units get more exp the more the higher level they already are in it, like FE7 normal mode. It's also why feeding all bosses to Seth is a good idea. The boss-bonus plus the inverse EXP curve is easily able to overpower the penalty he gets for being promoted vs unpromoted enemies. It's definitly not intended for him to hit 16 at this stage without grinding, but lol.

Thank you for giving me a very good argumented response on whether or not I should use my whip on Tana, very cool

Tana seems to be there mostly if Vanessa gets RNG screwed in level ups

Simple: If you like her, play her Look at me, I love L'rachel, even though she is objectively bad (bad mag. Growth and joins underleveled kinda late) but, I still enjoy and love to use her... Also: Over the final you were showing what seems to be a romhack of FE8 with some changes, what is it name?

5:12 that spicy stat growth is what I love

Tana at base is able to one round *some* phantom ship Mogalls. They need above average defense and HP to survive, and Tana takes at most 2 damage with a fresh pure water. Cormag always one rounds them, but takes between 4 to 7 if his pure water is fresh.

yeah i think you're right that it's basically no help to consider maximum grind across the board what with how it makes comparison more or less pointless, but i always wonder a bit that it's always seen as all or nothing. i guess "how much grind" is a variable that is difficult to control for and therefore consider, but i always wonder if i'm weird in that what i tend to do is like, maybe go knock off a level or two for some of my units, sort of topping them up every now and again. real hard to consider when you're looking at overall comparisons, i guess

I think I got lucky with my Tana? She can one-shot a lot of enemies and gets a ton of crits. Same with Vanessa. Honestly, a lot of my units end up getting critical hits no matter what game I'm playing.

A bit unrelated but I am currently playing the hack where the footage came from. Having a really hard time on some chapters because of skill issue. Good thing I chose casual mode at the start.

I went back to my latest Sacred Stones playthrough after watching midway through this video and saw that my untrained Vanessa had virtually the same stats as Tana did in her joining chapter. Yeah, they did *NOT* do this gal any justice. She basically exists to give you a Flier in the BAFFLING event you decide to keep Vanessa killed off for whatever reason.

so i really like using Tana and Vanessa at the same time. Sure Tana is forced to wait a little bit longer for that promotion item in chapter 13, but all you're really missing out on waiting on her promotion is the promo gains (in my case i always go wyvern knight), the best of which is 4 con, 2 str and 2 speed and the 1 movement, and while those are very strong increases, i dont find the difficulty spike of sacred stones really hits until chapter 15 in erika's rout, and 13 in ephraim's rout, so its not like you are super strapped for combat power.

Gotta love the showcase of Sacred Trilogy. Such a awesome redux of the game

Honestly, the issue here doesn't really affect me personally... but I'm one of those weirdos who waits until level 20 to promote units.

I accidentally killed tana in both eirika and ephraim route, same with Vanessa. Also, in my eirika playthrough I literally sped ran the map you get cormag in so I genuinely had 0 idea you were even supposed to get him there 😭😭😭

My favorite Vanessa is Falconknight at ch9 Eirika. Sword access against pirates was so good even on my 0% hard mode run

Sorry, you lost me the moment you suggested Vanessa go Wyvern Knight (In all seriousness love your content and this is no exception) EDIT: WAIT YOU CAN USE TANA TO RECRUIT CORMAG IN EPHRAIMS ROUTE?!? THIS IS HOW I LEARNED THAT?

In my ongoing playthrough of sacred stones im using both vanessa,tana and corgmag and honestly all 3 have been great. Also this is ephraim route.

I paused at the pot where Lute is fire balling a mercenary who can hit her for 13 of her 19 HP and it just kind of struck me that it's kind of fucked how we just chunk these kids at people that can easily cleave them in half just being like "just make sure you don't let him hit you then. yeesh!"

Tana dying there because of that crit was very unfortunate

I don't get it, I don't see any reason of training Vanessa before route split. She is only necessary in the fog of war chapter for saving the villagers from the spider. Apart from this, Vanessa can be benched safely for the first 8 chapters. In Erika chapter 9, where saving both villages is a side objective. Having a strong Franz is essential, riding alongside Seth, surviving the sniper steel bow and the killing edge of the myrmidon on the way to get in time to the pirates whose AI is designed weirdly to ignore your units and going straight to the village. A trained Vanessa will not help with this. As for the other village across the sea, it is easy to lure those pirates with your sword units standing on the beach as these enemies are set to attack you when in range.

10:00 This is blasphemy I hope your Moulder get stat screwed

Another loss for the tans agena :(

When i played this game i used ALL the fliers. Yes i have an irrational fear of archers now.

it's a pretty emblematic problem to most GBA fliers. the high lance weight to low con true combo makes practically all peg fliers mediocre to poor combat by default, so even minor additional issues like with Tana make them practically worth dumping when you have your flier utility set.

I remember "Tana is Better" (than Vanessa) being a meme at some point a while back, and I still agree. 3 fliers is usually the way to go though honestly

Very good summary of the situation, unfortunately she just doesn't quite cut it

Counterpoint, I literally am biased towards my Ross and Neimi and every time I play SS, Vanessa is only around 7 or 8 when I get Tana, so its a coinflip if I use her or not

I never train Vanessa, her low strength and bulk frustrate me, and you can rescue drop just fine with a level 1 pegasus. So I generally end up promoting Tana and Cormag as my main flying units

1:40 is basically the whole video? Vanessa isn't worth promoting unless you get RNG blessed, and Tana ramps hard. She's superior or equal 8/10 times at base, and 99/100 times if you promote units at 13-15 which is what the game pace expects. There's also no reason not to use Cormag and Tana, including their support. There's no mystery here, self inflicted. Tana >

I always use Tana since my first playthrough. Never once used Vanessa. I played Eirika route my first time and she joined just in time to ferry units across the river. Vanessa sucks. She can't 1v1 a single enemy for like the 3 chapters after she joins and is basically on par with Ross except Ross gets tons of chip exp. I use her in chapter 2 to save Ross and get the village then she is benched. Doesn't help that chapter 3 is indoors and she is useless. Flying just is not really needed besides chapter 2 until Tana joins. I never really use pegs for combat outside of SoV or FE4 as Wyverns are just better but Vanessa is so terrible that I easily just swap in Tana since she is a higher level when she joins. I focus on training Franz in the early chapters as well as either Lute or Artur. I absolutely despise the early pegasus archetype they have cost me more resets than any other unit and probaly irl days of my life from those resets.

It sometimes feels like Tana meets both more Str thresholds than Vanessa and more Spd/Skl thresholds than Cormag in most of my Eirika runs. I'm not denying that Cormag is objectively better, but I just like usin Tana.

Counterpoint: I dont like flying units therefore Tana, Vanessa and Cormag all suck and the two Elysian Whips are the equivalent of a free White Gem

Tana just always gets more strength than Vanessa for me and ends up prioritised over her because of that. Vanessa gets strength screwed so much I feel like I'm being gaslighted when everyone says she's top tier with Seth.

yeah but the one time i used vanessa she leveled strength 2 times over 18 levels and like clearly she won't be any better if i try training her again amirite also im ngl i had absolutely zero idea you could recruit cormag with tana in eph route like are you serious???? why what connection do they even have lmao

What my issue with her is why this 6 con lance unit starts with a heavy lance in a chapter with no armoured guys.

Tana was good in every playthrough I've ever had

I cannot believe that Tana is worse than miss 12 speed at level 16

I love ALL Dani Doyle videos!!!! ❤

Is that a threat, gonna fix tana 😮

Love that you have the rom hack in the description, yoire a saint.

3:40 Cormag is a level 11 wyvern rider, not a wyvern knight

Honestly, if I wasn't in the mood for derping around with overleveled units and rolling the game, I wouldn't be playing Sacred Stones. The absurd power trip is what makes Sacred Stones noteworthy to me. That, and it scratches that completionist itch in a way that basically no other FE does. Seth is still boring because he starts there, so there's no joy to be had in turning him into a wrecking ball, but everyone else is great. It's even better when you can make cool story moments happen as a result. For example, I love abusing the tower to get Cormag strong enough before Scorched Sand that he can have his revenge on Valter, and Joshua strong enough to face down Carlyle and Caellach. There are limits to how much I care to grind, of course, but Sacred Stones, for me, is not about maintaining game balance at all -- it's about shattering what little balance remains into millions of tiny pieces for the sake of my amusement.

Gonna stop you right there.... theres nothing to fix. ;)

you should really use a stat bar from the wiki or using a stat calc to show the stats, instead of just saying numbers because oh my god it does not help comparing

I personally prefer using Tana over Vanessa then in tandem with Cormag. I don’t necessarily find flying to be as detrimental/desirable in FE8

I always preferred Tana to Vanessa because she have higher strength

my first thought: what's wrong with tana?? my second thought: i guess that's what the video's about huh. anyways, i'm quit being sassy and watch the video lol.

Hope you're having a good day c:

Tana unfortunately suffers from being a Diamante archetype. She’s obviously good with uber investment but you could say that about every unit. Compare that with Duessel, the Lapis archetype, who’s strictly the better unit on account he has Lapis’ armour.

I think Seth is of the Ofey bracket, not Jaigen, one is the younger pre promote and one is a grandpa, though I like Tana, she's determined

I hear the Death's Door OST. Avarice is such a good song!!! 10/10 choice

Now the real strategy for Tana is intentionally letting Vanessa die so the elysian whip has to go to her

Awakening hard mode suffers because the devs expect you to kill the 2 trash packs that pop up after every cleared chapter. That's why enemy stats balloon so fast as soon as they start spawning

I had no problem at all grinding Tana to level 20 then promoting her in a non tower run.

Tana is a good unit who struggles because her competition is really good.

Okay, but hear my out... In Restoration Queen she can be gay

I don't play fire emblem but I like watching your videos :)

What’s the version of the game you are playing?

DANI HOW COULD YOU

In Erika route I have a lot easier time using Tana I use her over Cormag for the most part. Emphrim route she’s so hard to get going and you get cormag shortly after

I just played thru Sacred Stones recently and I used both Vanessa and Tana and Vanessa just did really bad the entire game for me, she even had the most deaths of anyone on my team at 9 (I'm bad at fire emblem lol)and at no point did she feel like I could let her go off and do stuff unattended while Tana did eventually reach that level, though she wasn't exactly a juggernaut either. The real hero of that playthrough was Great Knight Amelia lol she could not be defeated Now Florina in 7 hard carried the whole game for me, but that's neither here nor there lol and I'm playing 6 now and both Shanna and Thea are doing better than Vanessa+Tana so I dunno, maybe I just got lucky/unlucky lol

I don't think it's that complicated honestly. She's vulnerable when she joins, and you've probably been using Vanessa already, who has slightly lower potential but in reality will just function 99% the same. Most players will get Tana, try to use her and find she's pretty paper and not that easy to feed kills, then just bench her. It's definitely very possible to use her even if you don't use valni, sure, we're playing SS after all, but for the most part the question remains: Why would you?

I love Tana. I was a use yer > Vanessa as a youngin lol. I'm using her in a reverse recruitment and she was very underwhelming. Prob the rng

tana is bad because her horse has wings and thus cannot be used in my sacred horses run. bad unit

what is going on in this video? lol, how did you powerlevel tana to have max stats in chapter 11?

Hey fe12 is My second favorite FE

This seems like a 1 cookie NOW vs a 2 cookies later deal between Vanessa and Tana. That speed slays. I find it odd that Tana isn't an S or A tier to most FE fans. Just because Seth is ridiculous it doesn't mean Tana isn't very good too.

Tana suffers from Cormag and Vanessa Supremacy... and it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. 😂

What do you mean with Tana being worse than Vanessa? Didn't you ever hear about the tragedy of Cheese's Vanessa the Slow?

Based Tana Criticizer lets gooooo Nah but seriously good video, lots of good points. Even just compared to the other fliers Tana is put in a pretty bad spot, it seemed like they really wanted her to be the Caeda of this game but I don't really hear her talked about as often.

You can arena abuse in other GBA games… allow me step in and push my glasses. I found out (I’m pretty sure someone else did too I just didn’t research) that the amount you pay to go into the arena is proportional to the difficulty of the enemy. So in the first arena in this game I’d only enter if the price was about 700 or less and it’s still possible to lose but the odds are waaay better than if you paid like 900 to enter. Then heal up and go at it again if the price is too high wait until next turn or use a different unit

Ah so Tana is my favorite (My lawyers have advised me joke is old)