Here we can have a nice civil discussion on current cavalry balance issues. Please feel free to express your opinions, but let's try to keep this focused on the discussion at hand and not bring anyone's mother, race, or sexual orientation into it.
Here's my small list of changes that I've come up with or I've seen posted elsewhere that could potentially help return cavalry's skill curve, rewarding those who are good and penalizing those who bandwagon:
1) Athletics + Riding < Agility/2
Credit to Tomas for this one. It slaps bandwagoners hybrids right in their ugly faces. Pure riding players will enjoy a maneuverability and speed advantage over hybrid cavalry.
2) Only Jousting Lance & Great Lance couchable
Credit to Torben and Bjord. I shouldn't even have to explain this, but I will.
If you're riding up on someone unawares, now you have to hit them in the head to get that nice, juicy one shot.
But... but shields! Bring a bardiche or get a bumpstab/bumpslash. But... but heavily armored cavalry! They're heavily armored. Deal with it.
3) Pop the bubble
Seriously, 99% of the players in the game actually agree on something. It might actually be worth doing. Note that the other 1% of the playerbase are steel shield plated charger tanks who can still pump their shield skill plenty high to compensate.
4) Increase lance speed drastically and/or shorten the 'hangtime' in the animation
This will be controversial, but hear me out. This reduces the window lances have to strike. It will increase the skill ceiling in cav vs cav and cav vs infantry fights dramatically. Skilled lancers should be able to handle this without a problem, and might even consider it a buff. Bad lancers will be in a lot of pain. Yes, it might be harder to block and make the lance more effective on foot, which brings me to my next point.
5) Remove lance overhead attack on foot
This weapon should honestly not be nearly as viable as it is in its current state. Bring a backup weapon if you plan on doing anything other than half-assed pike support after losing your horse. This is kind of a pet peeve but I get plenty of kills after being dehorsed on a 12/30 dedicated lancer alt, and I know other players do as well. It really shouldn't happen that often.
6) Remove horse rearing for pikes and longspears and replace it with a one shot kill
Now, this is probably another one of those controversial things. I think the horse should just flat out die. Pikes should be a diamond-hard counter to cavalry. Don't be stupid and charge a pikeman without a plan. In an ideal world, the pikeman would need to plant the pike or longspear, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.
7) Fix the horse rearing angle
It is way, way, way too wide. I have actually been stopped as I rode by a pikeman three feet directly to my right because he stabbed into the thin air in front of my horse. Any warhorse worth his salt is going to look at that little puny spear pointed away from him and snort with laughter.
8) Buff horse health or armor with riding skill
If your horse is going to get one shotted by a pike or longspear, it better be able to stand up to more than a couple of arrows to the body. There are actually high strength players running around with more hitpoints (not effective health, actual hitpoints) than some horses. As an added bonus, this screws over hybrids even harder. If it's not possible, just buff health on lower tier horses and buff armor on higher tier horses.
9) Fix internal horse balance
Honestly, it's bad. I could spend an entire post going on about how exactly to do this but it would detract from the points I'm trying to make here.
Note that most of these things that can be construed as a nerf are really targeted towards:
a) bad lancers
b) hybrids
c) the bubble