Exactly, like currently the anti-archer camp pretends that cavalry doesn't exist at all as a built-in counter to kiting. I've never seen even the fleetest footed archer outrun the slowest mounted player. 
I know, they will complain that archers could dance around the cavalry without being touched. That's because they aren't real cavalry. Real cavalry had no problem getting the dancing archer. They did it every round. Now even the W key wonders can get horse bumps on the immobile archer unit.
What is real cavalry for you? The top 10%? Should a game be balanced only around those people? And what if an archer places himself on disadvantageous terrain for cav, like steep slopes, a few rocks or next to a wall? Still a natural counter?
Cavalry is NOT a natural counter, already the fact that archers can dismount cavalry easily disqualifies it for that role. The chances are about even, I would say, and that's not a counter.
This "kiting" issue was nothing more than an excuse for another nerf on archery. There was no kiting issue, there were only people who couldn't deal with the limitations of their class along with its benefits.
Horses, shields, other ranged, and agility builds all adequately dealt with mobile archers.
QUIT BALANCING THE GAME BASED OFF OF THE DUEL SERVER!
At least to me your opinion seems to be quite biased. I don't write this down as an ad hominem attack or to falsify your points, it's really... well, feedback.
Saying there was no kiting issue is plain wrong. Many, perhaps most or even almost every round in cRPG ended with some ranged player running away from melee players. Never mind if it was a archer, a horse archer or a horse crossbowman. The end of the round got delayed, and nobody was actually playing. The dead players were spectating, and the living players were running. There is no way you can deny this happened, because it did and everybody saw it. And for everybody except of the kiting players this was no fun at all, which is fatal in a game, because games usually have the purpose of making fun. (At this point I want to add that the "do something else while waiting"-argument is big bullshit, because when I play a game I play a game, and whatever I am expected to do outside of it is no part of the game, and forcing me to do something like that is nothing else but bad game design. You don't make movies and deliberately place long and boring parts in them, so everybody can go out and take a piss, get a beer or read a book, and when it's becoming interesting again you hear a special sound to have everyone come back again.)
And it's the infantry players who couldn't deal with the limitations of their class? Where have the limitations of archers been? 2hd/halberd/pikeman? Shoot him. Cavalry/HA/HX? Shoot him, hope you win. Archer, crossbowman, thrower? Shoot him, hope you win. Shielder? Kite.
Compare it to 2hd infantry, for example:
2hd/halberd/pikeman/shielder? Approach, fight, and hope you win. Cavalry? Wait until they approach, then fight, hope you win. If they don't approach, wave them and smile, you can't do anything else. HA/HX? Pray to god they don't choose you as target, as there is nothing you can do about it. Crossbowman/Thrower? Approach, fight, hope you win. Archer? Dodge arrows, hope someone else will kill him, don't bother attacking, he will run.
To me it seems like infantry had more limitations than archers. Don't you agree?
Everything which changed was that the time window for killing enemy players was shortened to the point when the enemy infantry reaches you. Before you had even more time during the kiting phase, until you ran out of ammo. The only exception are shielders now, because to a single archer they can approach relatively (!) safely. But this just represents a hard counter, like many other classes have to live with, too.
But do you know how you can still deal with shielders? Stick with your archer mates and disperse a bit. That way every shielder who tries to approach the archers can't face all archers with his shield, and will catch a lot of fire. That way archers can defeat an equal amount of shielders.
QUIT ARGUMENTING BASED OFF OF THE DUEL SERVER!
