I am sorry, I could not let this go either.
With cav you don't increase you own HP, and you either sit on something that can be oneshot by any decent build, or sit on something that feels like a supertanker, even though you have to catch powerboats that copulated with mosquitos. Either way it's a big ass target for any non-blind archer.
You can only be 1shot if you are going full speed against a german stab or greater. The stabby polearms can indeed 1shot a medium-light horse, but I doubt others can. Slowing down before lancing greatly reduces damage taken. Your horse can tank the hit for you in this situation, and you can get a free stab on someone while they are stunned from hitting your horse. Archers don't do enough damage in 1 shot unless you are rushing at them. If you don't isolate yourself against an enemy group, you won't get pelted too much.
It is very difficult for melee to be a mosquito and hit you at the same time. Even if you miss, it is easy to turn into them and at least bump them if you see the general direction where they are moving, or if you know they will try to switch directions to hit you.
Also, losing your horse automatically makes you take a nap on the ground (the longest stun in the game), long enough for some people to get 3 free hits. So when you get dehorsed you are a normal footman like every other footman except that in average you took two solid hits, so most often you are a dead normal footman.
I believe 3 hits are false, and that they can only get 2 hits at most unless you were unlucky to get kicked, too. This only occurs if you get dehorsed from a stab/ranged right in front of a melee. If you are turning/moving away when you get dehorsed, it takes an additional few seconds for the melee to reach you. At most, he can jump and swing at you. With the recent change to dead body soak hitboxes, there is a great chance for the horse to soak your hit, even if it appeared to be a direct hit at your body.
Moreover, sure you can run away with great speed, but during the century you spend accelerating, you can easily get hit and ganked.
I can only see that occurring if you turned into
another melee group while escaping the previous one. While riding away from someone trying to hit you, you receive much less damage due to the massive negative speed bonus. Horses do accelerate pretty fast imo, and there is a low speed threshold before you begin to bump those close to your horse.
Not even mentioning the fact that when a human stands in front of a stopped horse, the horse cannot push the human, it's like a brick wall.
If your horse was initially at 0 speed, yes. Even so, you can slightly turn and then they get bumped once you begin to move. You can also pressure them with your lance held from getting too close. It would be silly if you can bump someone right in front of you at rest. If you get stopped, you can still stab at the person who stabbed at you, and you can get off your horse in time if you believe you can't escape. There were many times where I escaped after getting stopped and someone tried to block me, as well as horses escaping from me after I stopped them and tried to hug the horse.
Finally, the "awesome" pierce damage was already not enough to kill some archers with full speed bonus before this patch. Now it's more like "pityful".
It's pretty bad only because the lance and light lance are so much better now. I think that's an internal balance issue. I still think overall, you still deal a healthy amount of damage even with heavy lance. It's bad relative to the others, I agree.
If you try to block a lancer, you are doing it the very wrong way. No matter the attack he's planning (btw all cav moves with any horse and any build are telegraphed 2 hours before being executed), there's always a way you can dodge and hit. Things like bump-"something" are the easiest way to get killed for a cav, cause they have 0 defense while doing it. If even with a 2h you get killed by cav in duels I really don't know what is wrong with you.
The cav can goad the melee into attacking first. The cav can utilize that space in time to attack. Most of the time, the melee can block, but you can still get a bump in. The melee doesn't know when you are going to accelerate in and attack, and it is dangerous for the melee to jump at you. If you have a full health horse and can take a few hits, it can be worth it. With this slow playstyle, your horse doesn't take massive amounts of damage in 1 attack, too. 2h are limited to stabs in this case, and you can just trample over any 1h. I would not risk this against polearms too much.
btw even if I sound mad I am not that much. I abandoned cav. It is just irritating to witness such ignorance.
I am a cav melee hybrid, and it is easy to make use of the best of both worlds in this scenario. I am not the greatest cav, but getting a few kills on horse and a few on foot every round is very doable. You can choose who to attack and the general location to get dehorsed.
