Been playing Long Hafted Blade cavalry a lot lately and I must say this class is pretty fucked right now. I'm not saying it isn't effective at all, but there are a few reasons why we don't see this class on the battlefield anymore.
First off, the speed of the swing is sloooowwwwww. If you don't time that swing perfectly, you're going to miss that perfect spot. If you don't hit with the perfect spot, you're going to glance.
And even then you're going to glance if you don't have a massive speed bonus, which brings me to second point: my (non-loomed) LHB glances on anything that isn't naked if the speed bonus isn't very good. If you try to damage someone while slowly riding by them you're not going to do shit, it will just glance.
Third, the cav pole swing animation is just bad. You're going to get outreached even by 1h (unless you hit with that tiny perfect spot and even then I'm not sure if it's going to outreach). On top of that, the collision of the pole seems to end 60-70% through the swing. This means that even if the swing hasn't completely ended yet, it's going to just go through whatever you were swinging at - I tested this versus trees, if I hit early in the animation it's going to collide, if I hit after 50% of the swing is through there's a good chance it'll just go through the tree. So basically only the first 60% of the swing is useful. Right swing seems to be better than left here and seems to have longer collision. Left is downright abysmal, bad reach and 50% through the swing it doesn't even collide anymore.
Combine all that with the maneuver nerf the cavalry got and you got yourself a very borked class. You're going to suffer against any form of cavalry: lancers, 1h cav, hell even 2h cav. You're going to suffer versus infantry as well, even shielders.
Which brings me to a question, why was this even nerfed so hard? I don't recall swingable pole cav ever being OP or anything. Or was this class just simply forgotten and destroyed by nerfs done to other parts of the game that are connected to the class (like cav turning speed nerf, cut vs armor nerf, ...)?
Anyway, my suggestion is to make it more like Native: faster swing speed with native animations. Don't think there needs to be a damage buff, although I would sure like one.
