Hard counter may have been the wrong word. Let me rephrase:
Every class can beat every class, even hoplite or sword and board with throwing. The same cannot be said about hx.
Disclamer: I don't necessarily agree that hx should be nerfed.
Spend a bit on throwing. Get a throwing axe. Throw it in horses face. Kill HX when they are floundering on the floor, or slaughter them in melee with much better melee skills.
Seems a valid way to beat HX to me.
Saying ranged cav has no counter is utter bollocks. Even cav can counter them with half a brain. I used to relish chasing Leed, Kerrigan or Chagan on the battlefield because it was a massive challenge. Those guys knew how to slaughter ranged cav just as much as any other class. Infantry has a perfectly decent chance unless they have made their build utterly unsuitable to the task. Wearing light armour, with a 2h sword, no shield and no polearm is asking for ranged to shoot you to death. And that's the way it should be. But armour, a shield, a polearm or heck even a 1h + shield can do fine against ranged cav. It just requires patience. Something crpg players are sorely lacking.
Though when a hoplite is last alive against 10 enemies, the round won't take 2 minutes to end. Every infantry has a hard counter in getting ganked.
This has no bearing on balance. The round lasting 2 more mins because an HX refuses to die is nothing to do with how good or bad they are. And with flags it's a pointless argument. 2 mins is nothing and the infantry inevitably always wins the flags.
Okay, let's do this bullet point style then:
Protecting your own ranged: What if there is no ranged to protect? Especially on smaller servers (which is what I play on mostly since my comp can't handle EU1 clusterfucks at all) this is a frequent occurrence.
Waiting for flags: I explained in my first post why I think this is a shitty scenario, why it's boring both for me and for everyone else who has to wait and why it's not fun or requires any skill at all from my part. Sure I might get lucky, survive all the bolts/arrows and bumps and get the flag but it's going to take a long time and is not fun at all for me since i get to do nothing about it.
Shield: Doesn't help me fight the HA/HX in any way. Just makes the process of killing me harder. I played a hoplite up until recently precisely because I wanted to be able to fend of
Throwing: That's ranged. I don't think you should be forced to get ranged to be able to fight against everyone in the game.
Yes, I am pretty much a melee purist. I played the melee server more than the regular ones when it was up. And as melee infantry everyone can fight me, but I have hard counters in HA/HX. The only reason I can have a good time playing as infantry is because there are others choosing not to play as HA/HX (or running ranged to an extent, but that's much better now).
Up until recently I played as a hoplite in attempt to fend of ranged and cavalry. Problem was "fighting" enemies such as HA/HX was just a huge waste of time and I see a lot more melee action now just by bumrushing for the melee with super-light armor and weapon.
as said, I can understand it being fun and challenging to play as HA/HX, even though it's not at all to my taste. What I'm saying is that there is not under any circumstances fun to fight against them when not being able to fight back or even run away effectively.
Your posts always come across as I can't play the way I want to play all the time because of so and so and so that particular thing should stay UP ect.
Throwing weapons are a great way to counter horse ranged. If you don't want to invest in them then that's your problem. The same way you don't want to take a shield and have some patience. At some point the HX/HA will be forced to close you down and that's when you strike. I've known plenty of shielders to be great at taking down horse ranged because they are willing to wait for the time to strike.
Personally with my hoplite I have never ever had a problem dealing with ranged cav. Because I am perfectly happy to sit behind my shield and out wait them. It's not hard and eventually they will have to do something or risk the flags. I find that fun. But then my concept of fun is clearly different. But that shouldn't mean a particular class should be nerfed because I don't like fighting them properly.
