I favor cavalry for the NA servers. This means that I use a heavy lance. This weapon is very effective on horseback. I've recently retired and loomed my destrier once again to become cavalry again. I would like to use the same equipment as I had in my previous generation. This included a bec de corbin. at lvl 30 i had something like 130 wpf in poles, and about 100 in 1handers. I was able to use a shield while deploying my lance. However, when dehorsed I was left with the lance in hand and a 1 hand weapon that I did not prefer and that I had a lower WPF in. My only real concern lies with the fact that a heavy lance is both unsheathable, and takes up two of four available slots. The nature of this weapon and the necessity of a lance while on horseback and not having enough money to afford a plated charger and armor to allow me to go 1 hand cav build forced me in my previous build to sacrifice the use of my bec on cav maps in favor of a 1h weapon. All this in order to be able to carry a shield. Anyone who has played cav in NA servers knows that you immediately become a target for enemy archers and the shield is indespensable. I would like to be able to make my new gen character have the ability to carry a shield and lance as a package and still have a viable melee polearm. At the moment I believe only the lower level battle fork (forgot its name) is a one slot weapon. There are three simple solutions that would allow me to use my bec and still use a lance on horseback. Option A: drop the shield. Granted this would free up a couple skill points, it would basically guarantee a quicker death with the amount of archers we're seeing in NA servers these days. Especially since they just recently got rebuffed. Option B: Use the Bec from horseback. The length of the bec and the nature of playing against other cavalry and longer poles/2h's makes this unfeasible. And I do not know if you can use a shield while wielding the bec from horseback. Gut feeling is telling me no. Option B: By some miracle, if the lance were switched to consuming only one slot. This is obviously my favorite. However, it also makes the most sense in my mind. It is still considered unsheathable. Its not a viable weapon in melee. The current system forces dedicated cavalry such as myself to split their WPF into both poles and 1h causing performance to suffer with both in melee as a result. This results in the class which I enjoy playing being viable dependant solely on the map. Plus it just seems more realistic anyway. You're tellin me that a horseman couldn't carry his lance in one hand, a shield in the other, and a viable weapon on the back? once on the ground, the lance is gonna get tossed. It shouldn't be both 2 slotted and unsheathable.
Opinions please?
And I apologize for the rambling nature of the post, its been a long night.