You act like solo horse riders have some kind of Divine Right to being able to be able to attack a group of 4 players at speed, get a 1 hit kill on one of them and just gallop off whistling dixie. They do it all the time and a single arrow hit in a 7 second time frame just ain't going to cut it.
BS. First, it's a courser. It can very well die in one arrow shot in the face, one crossbow shot in the body if it's charging, or one throwing projectile, as well as get stopped and killed by a surprise pike from the ass, or outright killed from it. Hell, a aware onehander can one-hit kill a lancer's horse and then overhead the lancer on the floor for bonus style points. Charging 4 aware people is a ticket to suicide. Try it before you speak such nonsense.
Trust me, game balance is the cavalry charges in, maybe gets his 1 hit kill, but then LOSES his horse and yes, gets forced to melee.
What happens if the people are trying to kill your horse. Except, it's more like, charge in, get 0 kills, lose horse, lose half hp or full hp on ground, then try to melee. That is when you charge people with a clue and are watching. Yes, when nobody is watching and nobody cares to turn you can charge a group of 20 people, kill one or two and get away with it. Sometimes people seem to play as if they were all autorunning to the combat zone. Sometimes such a maneuver gets your horse surprise-onehit in midst of a gang, which is basically just as dead as being instakilled outright.
Horse speed wasn't nerfed. Everything else was, including time it takes to switch out weapons.
No, it wasn't. You can still pull a magic pike from your ass when a horse (a courser with riding 5) is 20m away then stab and spin it while stabbing and stab the horse with the shaft of the pike and it will rear the horse.
Either reduce the horse speed and achieve game balance, or increase the bow speed to be faster than a courser, decrease the draw time for bows, and reduce the time it takes to switch weapons to be balanced with the horses speed.
You can already switch weapons when a horse is 20m away. Just switch and start stabbing. Duh. And really, if you think horses are faster then arrows in the game, you're beyond help.