Does getting a tattoo hurt? how bad?

In my opinion if you can tolerate piercings, tattoos shouldnt be bad. But I'm also one to opt out of a piercing, I'm trying to convince myself to get my belly button pierced but the idea makes me kind of nauseated. Meanwhile I have a big phoenix that goes from my shoulder to the middle of my back, and I sat through that which was 8 hour of pain and many more hours of pain while it healed. All depends on tolerance. Honestly needles are horrible to me, but I wanted tattoos so badly I got over it pretty quickly.