The Rat in AUS-8 continues to be a solid value. My wife carries a Blur. It's a cool knife and 14C28N is a great budget steel. I just don't like aluminum handles and have fallen out of love with assisted opening. A big part of that is the proliferation of excellent manual actions among budget knives. More on that in a minute. First...
The Tenacious is NOT a good deal at its current price. I have a hard time justifying 8Cr13Mov on knives that cost $20-25. It's NOT a good steel relative to AUS-8, 12C27, 14C28N, Acuto 440, 9Cr18Mov, or Chinese D2. Sure, D2 can be an issue in some environments. If corrosion resistance matters though, every other steel besides AUS-8 on that list is also more stainless than 8Cr13Mov. To put this in context, the Byrd Meadowlark in 8Cr13Mov was a good deal when it cost $20. Now it costs $28.50 and I could only recommend it to someone who absolutely needed that form factor and had a severe budget restriction. Even then, I'd recommend going without and saving up.
Now for the good stuff. Have you tried Civivi? The Baklash continues to be one of their best knives. The Chronic is nice for a small knife. A lot of people are putting the Ortis up for budget knife of the year but I haven't tried it (yet). All of those use Civivi's 9Cr18Mov, which gets an excellent heat treatment and can outperform a lot of the Chinese D2. If you want D2 though, the Elementum is another gem of a small knife. Besides Civivi, I recently picked up an Artisan Arroyo. So far, I really like it. It uses their new AR-RPM9, which is a slightly modified PM version of 9Cr18Mov.