I think the reason people value Jagen units and the Christmas cavs is the mounted meta that I hear from a lot of FE fans. That’s why a lot of people drop clerics for troubadours alot.
Well ,IS intend us to use them in early time for some emergency situation then bench him later.
in fe3bk2/fe12 there is a house tell you should bench Arran later on
in fe 11 interview , the staff even said people would choose jagen for the force sacrifice.
so.why bother.?. 
also seth derseve his own archtype.
I always use Jagen archetypes and pre-promotes, provided that they’re good.
FE12 has quite a few of them. FE3H has them in the form of Shamir and Catherine (kind of) who are really good units that also scale pretty well to the endgame. I really like Jakob and Felicia in Conquest who are, at worst, 6-move staffbots but are easy to deck out with skills due to their unique internal level. Obviously Titania, Sothe and Marcus are great in their respective games.
I generally aim to play fast so any unit that helps me to achieve that gets used. I can see why people would avoid using them, but I really dislike slogging through the earlygame with 4/5-move scrubs so having someone that can dart around and kill key enemy units is really nice. It also makes keeping those scrubs (aka growth units) alive.
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My favorite Jagen is Titania from Path of Radiance.
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because even though Jagen has terrible growth rates, his weapon levels make him able to use any sword or lance besides the gradivus which means that he has access to those weapons before any other member of your army and weapon rank builds really slowly in og shadow dragon because it was a stat you leveled up instead of increasing with each hit
fe11 jagen is arguably even more silly, getting access to ridersbane at base which really means that he can defeat 80% of the enemy units in a single enemy phase because enemy variety is not a thing in fe11s dictionary
also Seth arguably does not need a separate archetype, the only thing separating him from other jagens is his crazy power and normal growth rates, this doesn’t detract from the fact that he is still a prepromote you get in the early chapters and is able to provide a safety net for the player and still allow them to play fast, by your logic Sothe, Frederick, and Gunter should be a separate archetype because they’re not paladins (Frederick and Gunter are great knights)
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so am i mustn’t bench character i want otherwise i am a bad player now?
of course sothe deserves an archetype after seeing how the Japanese treats him as a meme
For me it has to do more with the philosophy of them as well as fire emblem difficulty in general. Because you see. For the most part these games are designed in such as way that replaying them as an experienced player is fairly easy. Easy enough to the point were i take no pleasure in cheesing these games. So when it comes to the Jagens there are essentially some game design headaches.
Such as due to how early game heavy difficulty tends to be, so if you don’t use them you have a tedious early game that ends of crafting units that become strong enough to nullify the rest of the game. Or you use the jagen and said units don’t get as much experience and you breeze through the game, with a side of guilt that by using a strong clutch you have made the game somewhat trivial. Now of course this for the most part is scenarios were the game is quite easy.
But if its difficult enough to the point were you genuinely need that unit to get through, then its a required clutch that if you lose you get softlocked and it more or less becomes bad game design.
Now i feel like bringing up one particularly game to make a comparison to this archetype and that would be chess. Now FE is often compared as an Anime Chess, but more accurately its a series of mid-match games of chess with a narrative. But of course im talking about the Queen piece. In that of course it is a game were everything is ohko, so its balanced based on the movement of the pieces. And the Queen is one piece that has the most flexible movement. But can still be downed with one move.
So for me i think it comes down to Jagens being imbalanced for the sheer reason that they are great at all 4 stats more or less. And that rather than it being the strongest unit in your army. Its the broken one that can clear half the map. So out of those four stats (Attack, Speed, Bulk & Movement) try to have only two of them.
TL;DR: I don’t like to use Jagen’s/Oifey’s as they cheapen the experience of a whole game and as a whole needs to be a much more balanced/flawed or nonexistent.
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okay, from these comments I see a few reasons why Jagens are bad/shouldn’t be used
- they carry you through the game
- they fall off later
- it feels like cheating
- they steal exp
now then allow me to argue that these arguments are objectively incorrect
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USE THEM LIKE A NORMAL UNIT if you don’t throw your jagen into a mob without anyone else and watch them go wee then it’s your fault that they’re carrying you
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okay? They’re supposed to? I never got this argument, Fire Emblem gives you more than enough exp to go around, even more so if you choose to grind, bench them when they stop doubling or are taking too much damage (or put a brave weapon on them and watch them go weee)
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It’s not, these games are designed around using the Jagen to set up kills and take care of the enemies that your other units can not, this is why some people think bosses are too hard early game, they don’t use their jagen
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USE THEM LIKE A NORMAL UNIT if you use them as if they were just another unit and have them kill at the same or slightly higher rate than your other units then you’ll be fine, as long as your not actively giving your Jagen all of the exp there will be enough exp to go around
now then, I think that everyone who gives Jagens a shot instead of sparingly or never using them can agree that Jagens are among the most powerful units in each game, you can solo sacred stones and path of radiance with seth and titania, use frederick either as a stat backpack or a decent combat unit, give Jagen a brave lance or forged ridersbane and watch him go brrrrrr ect. So why does everyone hate Jagens? Probably because they look either stupid unfair or stupid to use, however fire emblem is a very different series that plays by its own logic so, if you haven’t tried out a Jagen yet
GO DO THAT
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I like most jagens but i rarely use them. its not due to anything other than a personal line of thought of “why am i using a prepromote to slaughter weaklings” caused by the fact that in some games without deliberately giving them weaker weapons they just kill just a few too many enemies too easily. I mostly save them for more dangerous spots on certain maps or if i know in advance something dangerous is nearby, like a killer weapon unit will surprisingly high hit but low-ish attack power (low enough that said jagen isn’t at risk but most of the other units in my party are).
I also don’t really play on anything crazier than normal in the gba games since i don’t do play throughs concurrently enough to remember anything about it.
Though i have done a lunatic awakening and most of a lunatic+ revelations playthrough before i started playing romhacks.
well there’s your problem.
in all seriousness, I get why you don’t use Jagens often, as long as you acknowledge that they are good units then I wouldn’t say your playing poorly of falling into a …
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Exactly. And many Jagens actually can’t kill with their base weaponry. Iron Sword Marcus leaves enemies at very low HP on Hard FE6. Same as SD Jagen. They literally can’t ‘steal exp’ for those who use that argument.
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and those that do get kills are usually the ones with actually good growths like Titania and Seth
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And honestly their growths don’t matter on those games anyways since the enemies are very weak and it’s a enemy phase game. On 0% Seth really only starts to struggle at combat on endgame. (Meant to reply to you)
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Yeah, i know they’re good i just use them sparingly.
As per that “normal” comment i think i did a hard run on fe7 way back when i was a kid ironically on hector mode since i like him the most out of the three lords and vaguely remember killing the dragon with lyn that run. I could be wrong on who killed it though, but i do remember lyn fighting it.
I also beat the GC one (i get RD and PoR’s names mixed up CONSTANTLY)
I’ve never really been a fan of intentionally playing a game with the intent of making myself suffer or over using an asset to the point of recklessness.
I’m not horrible at fire emblem, but i know i’m not the best at it either. I play them to have fun and if normal mode makes me look like a noob then so be it.
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Of course I use Jeigans! It’s honestly my favourite archetype in Fire Emblem. They’re strong, they leave kills for your scrubs if needed, can cheese easier games and make your playthrough a bit more manegeable in case of harder games. Honestly, I just love the “old overpowered retainer” that characters like the OG Jeigan or Marcus. In the case of the former, the start of Mistery of the Emblem Book 2, where Jeigan stands up ready to defend Marth and his homeland even though he’s like, really really old, it really got to my heart despite Altea’s almost laughable lack of minor character ddevelopment. And in the case of Marcus, he’s just a man who does not say “no” to his master even though he’s on a stupid mission like standing around Merlinus when not even the enemy wants to do anything with him, and how he’s got many unexxpected character traits like how he’s an expert of gourmet dishes or how he tells Lilina to just confess her feelings to Roy because he’s a clueless boy, or how he doesn’t treat Isadora differently to other members of Eliwood’s gang just because she’s a woman. The wiseness of these older men just get to me because I’m used to listen to adults and older people than me because I’m the youngest in my family. That’s why I love Jeigans.
…Yeah, I just can’t help rambling a lot about things I like.
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- Still feels like cheating. Using a Jagen against bosses is the worst feeling ever because it feels like I’m ruining a boss battle by nullifying it against a character obviously too strong for it, hah.
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I use Sothe and that’s it. And Idk how much he qualifies as a jagen.
Something about XCOM (a game similar in that in story progression you also level up units) I really like over FE is that right off the bat it gives you serious “oh god oh fuck” energy. Part of the reason for this is that there is no crutch unit. The Jagen does not exist in XCOM, and you have to deal with shitty units early on. I wish FE was more like this. (To be fair, I believe FE5 has good “oh god oh fuck” energy, but I’m focusing more on FE6-9.)
Because of this, I personally don’t enjoy using the Jagen. 
I, in my own playstyle, in my mind, by my own preference (see my point?), don’t enjoy using the Jagen. Higher difficulty with a Jagen just doesn’t do it for me. I would rather play some appropriate difficulty without the Jagen. And other people have their own playstyles, and that’s okay, and difficulty is a factor here, and that’s okay too. I’m not making an assertion based off of some meta that someone is a good unit or not. That’s just what I prefer.
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you have to agree, however, that allowing the player to play faster and riskier while also providing them a safety net is generally better game design than making the player deal with having to poke enemies with weak units and essentially turtle if they don’t want to risk death, in a game without permadeath design like that would be fine however fire emblem is generally designed to be played with classic mode on.
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the trade off is usually for the Jagens to have bad growths de-incentivse their long term use. which is why the jagens with good bases AND Growths are so good (i.e Seth, Marcus, and Titania) which makes them less safety nets and more a safety gun.