Crest works fine (and is the best for the rest of FSC), but there are better options for Vana if you really want to optimize it. Those options are Grey Owlite and Volcanic Plate.

Vana deals Normal damage and sets you on fire and stuns you.
Vana's fireballs deal Elemental damage and set you on fire.
Slag Guards deal Normal damage.
Zombies deal Normal and Shadow damage and set you on fire.

If you're getting hit by the zombies a lot, then you have bigger problems to worry about than gear, so Shadow defense is not a high priority.

All relevant shields can take a Vana smash. You never need to take two consecutive Vana smashes.

So you're mainly targeting the fireballs and you might be targeting the Slag Guards (although you're really going to not want to be shielding them since they're likely to break it whatever it is).

Also in the Vana fight you're generally going to want to not be shielding. If you have aggro, you want to be on the move, and if you don't have aggro then you need to be doing something.

So Grey Owlite is the best pick vs the fireballs. Volcanic Plate is the best pick vs the Slag Guards, and by far the ultimate shield for taking the Vana mace, which is largely irrelevant but kinda cool.

You're going to want shields of each type, so if you're trying to avoid doubling up, focus more on the shadow than the fire and shock when you're deciding about Owlite. Quite frankly, fire and shock are the worst status effects and you really can't go wrong with having resistance to them.

The easiest way to beat Vana is to use the standard Shivermist-Blitz Needle combo.

1) Shivermister freezes Vana all battle.
2) Blitz Needle shoots Vana all battle.
3) Everybody else kills zombies, puts out fires, etc.

If you've got a skilled Blitz on the team who takes Vana's aggro, understands when to shoot and where to shoot from (and to run away if things go wrong), a Shivermister who can place the bombs repeatedly while avoiding the summoned enemies, and auxiliary people who know how to prevent the slags from slamming into the Blitzer and the Shivermister, then you can realistically beat Vana without him slamming his mace down even once (although he'll usually get one or two in even in the better runs).

I wouldn't advise taking on Vana without a Shivermist unless everybody on your team has a complete understanding of Vana's aggro and how to manipulate it.

Your shield? Not that big a factor.

>should I even bother getting an elemental resistant shield if it's just going to have the same status resist

What do you mean by this? Status and elemental damage are separate things. Most statues that do damage do Elemental damage, but having protection from elemental damage won't protect you from statuses, at least not completely. It's beside the point as far as FSC goes, though; according to the wiki, neither normal nor elemental protection lower fire damage, only fire resist does. I'm going to assume that having your shield up when you catch fire reduces fire damage, otherwise fire resist on shield would be useless.

Having an elemental shield or a shadow shield just depends on what you want protection from more: shadow will protect you on the way to Vanaduke and Elemental will protect you from Vanaduke himself, since he does elemental damage.

Without the Shivermist/Blitz combo, the Vana fight is all about skill. It is decidedly not about gear. It doesn't matter what you equip or what you wear, Vana will kill the living hell out of you if you don't know what you're doing.

If your main goal is to kill Vana at a good rate of success, armor and shields are not the issue here. Weapons and understanding aggro are. Although I will digress and say that having Fire resist on your armor is important because without any Fire resist you're pretty much dead in two hits which is brutal.

The vast majority of FSC parties pull in a Blitz and a Shivermist. Even if you don't have either, chances are pretty good that your party will still break down properly to get it.

But as for the shield, I didn't mention that the falling ceiling is Elemental, same as fireballs. You absolutely MUST have a Fire-resistant shield in the Vana fight. There is no question about that, because everything sets you on fire. The things you generally shield in the battle are the mace, the ceiling (although you should be able to avoid it), the streams of fire, and mask phase fireballs. When it comes to the mace, any of the three main 5* shields can take one. When it comes to the streams of fire, any shield with Fire resist can take them. When it comes to the ceiling and the fireballs, it's Elemental you need.

In my opinion, Owlite is the best shield for the Vana fight. The only other options are Crest, which is inferior to Owlite, Volcanic Plate, which is a bit better than Crest but not really targeting the Elemental you want to be defending, and then there's Dragon Scale which has no Normal and probably can't take a Vana mace.

If your 4* shield can't take the mace (not sure how well 4* holds up), then you either have to dodge the mace, upgrade your shield, or go for Heavy Plate which has the appropriate amount of Normal defense and the Stun resist to take it.

Status protection on the shield protects the *shield* from the status. That is to say, the shield's health is depleted less quickly from the status component of the attack. You can see this most directly when shielding against pure status attacks like greaver fog and zombie breath.

If you're in a party doing shiverblitz and you don't have shiver or blitz, you're gonna be stuck mopping up shadow fire and slags. Not the most exciting tasks, but useful to the team none the less. Resist the temptation to break the freeze if you're not shooting a blitz charge, you'll just annoy your team and possibly get them and yourself killed.

I've personally come to prefer the "crazy disco party" style vana fight where we skip the shiverblitz routine and just run around like crazy trying to pile on the DPS how ever we can.

As I see it.. APS works really well, better than CoA againstr trojans, better than BTS for all round spikes and whatnot.

Add me in-game for FSC runs :)

To withstand a Vana mace smash you need to have:
1. 4* or up shield with normal defense
and (not or)w
2. either stun or fire resist
The reason why VPS excels all other shields at taking mace smash is because it has tons of normal defense and more health than non-Plate shields and both fire and stun resist.
And I was really furious when I found out Blackened Crest doesn't have fire resist and shock resist like CoA.