I respecced from cav to 2hander recently for the first time in months and I'm still amazed at how easy it is to kill cav. Juke the lance, stab the horse or rider, they're dead. Alternatively if they are very good cav.. you down block. Cav being especially dominating? Use those extra 2 slots for an xbow and bolts or a long spear. I didn't get a chance to be 2hander during The Tragic Cav Nerf of 9/16/2011, but I probably would've felt pangs of guilt and mercy at cav as they would just get completely ripped apart by infantry if they so much as hit a stone. Removing riding bonuses is just a bad idea all around, as there would be no reason not to do 27/15 for heavy cav or 30/12 for light cav (lmao)
Seriously
Strength: 30
Agility: 12
Hit points: 65
Skills to attributes: 14
Ironflesh: 0
Power Strike: 10
Shield: 3
Athletics: 0
Riding: 4
This would be the only viable light cav build, or perhaps 27/12 with full iron flesh to pretend to have survivability as cav. I am considering making this my main for strat, if you retry these cav nerfs.
The idea of buffing couching is pretty misguided too, it insta kills everyone except pure strength builds, which makes perfect sense. Only reasonable buff would be adding back in the Lance of Compensation, for ol' times sake. Seriously, all good cav just couch for the first 2 minutes of a match and insta kill everything, then support infantry and finish people off with thrusts, couching whenever opportune.
The acceleration thing was garbage by the way, I was able to deal with it and I'm sure most good cav would adapt (while having an awful time, far worse then lancing radius nerf) and everyone else would abandon the class, but cav really isn't that big of a deal. A team that lets itself get destroyed by cav is usually just a bad team, and the vast majority of cav players do 1:1 or so KDRs. Noob cav are gonna die pretty easily to ranged, other cav, and polearms/2handers, they are all REALLY effectively counter cav as it is. Pretty sure the people who wine the most are Rambo archers who stand alone at the flanks, and katana wielding honor duelers who get couched within 20 seconds of each round.
If you feel that readjusting the cav acceleration is still necessary (I really don't think it is) please just don't make it so extreme as you did. The lancing degrees nerf was a good balance decision and cav adapted within a week, but that acceleration thing was just extremely awful to play as.
